


maybe you were the ocean, when i was just a stone

by illuminatedcities



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Bad Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cunnilingus, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, OT3, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Polyamory, Praise Kink, Relationship Negotiation, Restraints, Sensory Deprivation, Threesome - F/M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 15:10:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6475213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illuminatedcities/pseuds/illuminatedcities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His name feels bitter on her tongue, like something gone stale. Harold gets up to make his way to the door, his movements stiff, awkward. He limps, his spine rigid, and when he turns to her on the doorstep, it is with his whole body, not just his head. Grace thinks about the metal bolts and pins drilled into his bones, all the things that have bled and healed and left scars between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe you were the ocean, when i was just a stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkingtothesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkingtothesky/gifts).



> It took a village to raise this story: you can find the complete list of people who were involved in this project in the notes at the end of this fic. <3
> 
> Title from Ben Howard, "Black Flies".

****PART I.** **

Now.

Grace meets Harold when he isn't _ _Harold__ , but a man who buys ice cream cones in winter and gives her flowers and writes out clues in neat script on scraps of paper.

Grace meets John when he isn't _ _John__ , but a stolen badge and a name that isn't his and a sad, sad smile on his face.

There is a lesson in that, somewhere, but she doesn't know what it is.

–

_Then._

_He walks up to her like a stray leaf tumbling into her path and she doesn't think, at first, doesn't dare to give the sweet, warm feeling inside of her chest a name._

_They talk and they talk and he smiles at her like she is more interesting than Central Park in January, more interesting than the sky and the grass and the ground beneath their feet. Nobody has ever looked at her like that, like she is the answer to someone's question, a fine silver key to unlock a door._

_His name is Harold Martin and he finds her, he finds pieces of her that she forgot even existed, and something in her unfolds, like a flower blooming in her chest: he sees her, finally, after all this time, somebody sees her._

_His name is Harold Martin._

_–_

Now.

Grace opens the door and a man that looks like Harold Martin waits right there on her doorstep. He wears a three-piece suit, expensive, lovely. _The glasses are different,_ is all that she can think, _he wore different glasses the last time I saw him. Why did he change his glasses?_

“I'm alive,” the man says.

“I gathered,” Grace says, over the panicked feeling of her heart fluttering in her throat like a caged bird.

Then she shuts the door in his face.

–

_Then._

_"There haven't been many people," Harold says while she unbuttons his shirt, his eyes searching her face._

_Grace leans in to kiss him. "Hard to believe," she says, easily._

_He blushes. It's a good look on him. "What I meant to say is that I haven't had a lot of practice," he says, insistent. He holds his hands like he can't quite decide what to do with them._

_Grace lets his shirt fall open and goes to work on his belt. "Hmh," she says, distractedly._

_"I just want to make sure that you're not disappointed," Harold says, swallowing roughly. He strokes her hair, tucks it behind her ear. He touches her like she is something unbearably precious and she wants to spread herself out beneath those hands, let him learn every inch of her body._

_"You think too much, Harold," she chides, kissing his jaw. His worry is making her feel all warm inside. She likes sex, the feeling of being intimate with someone for the first time, the pleasure of kissing and touching and finding a rhythm together._

_They have been taking it slow, five dates and nothing but a chaste kiss on the lips, and she wants this, too, somebody who takes so much care with her, who wants to make sure that she is feeling safe and happy._

_She leans in to kiss his cheek. "If this is moving too fast, we can wait," she says, but she can feel his desire in the way he holds himself, the way he keeps himself contained by sheer force of will. For her, Grace thinks. All for her. She takes off her dress. His eyes widen, and he presses closer to her, his mouth opening against her throat, wet and hot and perfect. She wants to climb into his lap and hold on to his shoulders and feel his weight above her._

_Harold looks at her, and he looks disheveled and nervous and so, so happy, and he says: "I don't want to wait for even another second."_

_Grace takes his hands and interlaces her fingers with his. She knows that she will have this, she thinks, she will have this for the rest of her life._

_–_

Now.

Grace spends one week feeling wrapped in cotton balls, dulled to the world. Her life is an endless stream of choices and chores: getting up, showering, choosing a dress, standing in front of the counter while the kettle is whistling. She stares at the stack of paper boxes on her cupboard for long minutes before picking a teabag and dropping it into a mug. All of these choices, and no consequence at all. Her phone doesn't ring and there are no letters in her mailbox.

Harold comes by again after his first visit. This time she is too tired and shaken to send him away, she just lets the door stand open and walks inside, waiting for him to follow. He sits in her living room and lets a cup of tea get cold on the table between them.

Grace has her hands in her lap, scratching and tearing at the skin of her nail beds. Harold tells her about surveillance, the government, about intelligent computers and conspiracies and ex-CIA agents and social security numbers. She doesn't interrupt him, just listens. She has never heard him talk this much, without interruption, like somebody has opened a faucet and now the truth is spilling out. When he is done, it is dark outside.

“I was trying to keep you safe,” Harold says. “There was no other way to protect you.”

She has a million questions: _ _So you were watching me this whole time? You never thought about contacting me? Were you at your own funeral? Did you meet someone else? What do you want me to say?__ In the end, she only nods and says: “If you could please leave now, Harold.”

His name feels bitter on her tongue, like something gone stale. Harold gets up to make his way to the door, his movements stiff, awkward. He limps, his spine rigid, and when he turns to her on the doorstep, it is with his whole body, not just his head. Grace thinks about the metal bolts and pins drilled into his bones, all the things that have bled and healed and left scars between them.

“It was the hardest decision I ever had to make,” he says, his voice raw with feeling.

He reaches out, like he wants to touch her shoulder or her hair. Grace has to make a conscious effort not to flinch: there is an illogical part of her brain that believes his skin will feel cold to the touch, like a corpse's. _ _You were dead__ , she thinks. _ _You were dead and I was all alone.__

He stops himself without touching her. “It was too dangerous, Grace, and I couldn't bear the thought of losing you.”

Grace nods. She read that sometimes people don't react to traumatic events right away, that you can walk away from a car crash with a broken leg and feel perfectly fine for a while, unaware of your broken limb, the blood and glass shards in your hair. She wonders when she is going to feel the pain, and how much it will hurt. She wonders if there will be blood on her fingers when she touches her head.

“Why now?” She asks, suddenly, surprising herself with the sound of her voice.

Harold swallows. “There have been recent developments that made me question my decision to keep you in the dark,” he says.

 _ _In the dark.__ It is a fitting description, she thinks: for years, she has felt like somebody blew out all the candles, turned off all the lights.

“What recent developments?”

His mouth is a firm, unhappy line. “Somebody with knowledge of your... situation suggested that you deserve to know the truth. And while the woman in question has less noble motives than one might think, I believe that she wasn't wrong.”

Grace thinks about that for a moment. “You told me because you didn't want her to tell me. You wanted to do it yourself.”

He blanches, but his face stays expressionless. She doesn't need verbal confirmation.

“Would you have done it either way?” She asks. “If nobody but you had known, would you have told me at some point?”

“I don't know,” Harold says. He looks miserable, defeated. “I honestly don't know.”

When she goes outside the next day, she can feel the eyes of hundreds of surveillance cameras passing over her. It feels invasive, like cold sweat at the back of her neck.

–

_Then._

_She wakes up to Harold watching her, propped up on his elbow, the sunlight streaming through the blinds._

_“Good morning,” Grace says, leaning in to steal a kiss. Harold slides a hand into her hair, cups the back of her head and keeps her close, kissing her back lazily._

_“I haven't brushed my teeth,” Grace says, awkwardly, when they part. She can't feel bad while looking at the smile on his face, the soft expression around his mouth. He looks different without his glasses, open, naked._

_“I don't mind,” Harold says, his palm warm against her naked shoulder._

_She snuggles closer, rolling herself on top of him. He brushes away the hair from her face. “Let's not have breakfast yet,” she says, biting her lip. She tugs the covers out of the way, slides into his lap._

_“Okay,” Harold says, a little breathlessly, placing his hands on her hips, anchoring her. “I'm sure we can think of something else to do.”_

_She leans down to kiss him, and the sun is warm, so warm on her back._

\--

Detective Riley shows up at her doorstep with a plastic box full of homemade pastries: a stack of cinnamon rolls, sweet and soft. Grace gestures him inside and places the box on the kitchen counter. She thinks about how widows and widowers receive food along with condolences from friends and neighbors. _ _I'm so sorry about your husband, here is a casserole dish.__ When Harold died, Grace didn't have any friends who knew about it, nobody to bring her food in boxes, or send crisp white cards with black margins.

In her living room, Detective Riley paces. She has to ask him to sit down two times, and even then he keeps fidgeting.

“I am so sorry,” he says, even before explaining that he's not a detective and that his name is John and that he knows Harold. Then he says it again. “I couldn't tell you the truth back when we first met, not when Harold did everything he could to keep you safe.”

She has heard about that part before. “Okay,” Grace says.

John looks like he is in physical pain. “He kept a picture of you, he never. He never _ _forgot.__ He thought about you often, and wondered if it was the right thing to do. I think that he just wanted to make sure that you weren't in any danger,” he then adds, quickly, like he's trying to convince both of them.

“Tell me more about the numbers,” Grace says, and “How did you come to work for Harold?” and “What is it that you do all day?”

John tells her, in his raspy, gentle tone, looking awkward on her small couch, like his long limbs should be taking up more space: he has folded in on himself like a piece of paper, small and neat.

It's easier to listen to him because his face isn't as familiar as Harold's. Talking to John doesn't bring back a staggering flood of memories. Grace feels sorry for him, his obvious misery at having lied to her about something that was out of his control. It makes her feel sympathetic towards him: he clearly adores Harold, believes that Harold gave him back his life, saved him.

After a while, she offers to make coffee and John jumps up from his seat immediately, following her into the kitchen to help. They sit at the kitchen table and drink hot coffee and eat some of the sweet, soft cinnamon rolls that he has brought. He talks about a number they have saved, a young girl on the run, and Grace reaches for his hand and squeezes it. John stops talking, his whole body going rigid in surprise.

“I'm not mad at you for lying,” Grace says. “You just did what you thought was best.”

He looks down at their hands in disbelief, then he carefully moves his thumb to stroke over her skin. She wonders, suddenly, if there is somebody who touches him, if Harold and him spend their days in the isolation of that library they mentioned, talking to no one but the people involved in their missions, always keeping a respectful distance between them.

“I am very sorry about what happened to you,” John says. He squeezes the words out of his throat in a way that makes Grace think that he knows a thing or two about grieving a loved one.

“You're a good person,” Grace says, and that has him moving his hand away like a door falling shut.

“I should not be taking any more of your time,” John says.

–

_Then._

_Grace takes a sip of wine and leans back against the side of the couch. She has her feet in Harold's lap, his thumb making circles on the arch of her foot, pushing down into her heel. She makes a sound like a pleased cat. “Tell me about firewalls,” she says, suddenly, picking up the thread of one of their conversations left unfinished._

_If Harold is surprised by her request, he doesn't let it show. She loves that, his ability to seamlessly slide back into a discussion, follow her leaps without any obvious difficulty._

_"The concept of a firewall," Harold tells her, and Grace curls closer, settling in,"Is that there is a system, which must be protected. The firewall protects the system by filtering the messages coming in."_

_Grace frowns. "What harm can a message do? To computers, I mean." Computers don't have self-esteem to be torn down, self-worth to be whittled away. Harold sometimes talks about computers like they are people, with minds and personalities, independent thought. It makes her imagine him in deep conversation with a laptop, a large computer, lights blinking, green neon lines of code running down the screen like in the movies._

_"A great deal," Harold says. He runs his thumb over the seam of her jeans. She can feel the warmth of his hand on her thigh. "It can ask for, and receive, classified information. It can tell the system to delete all its data, or effectively destroy itself."_

_Grace tilts her head. Perhaps computers did have self-esteem, after a fashion. "And how do you tell the bad from the good?"_

_"Oh, many ways," Harold says. "The simplest of which is a whitelist: trust only those messages whose sender is listed as permitted."_

_"And that protects the system?"_

_A shadow crosses Harold's face. "Not always. But it's as safe as can be."_

_Grace reaches for the wine glass and swirls it thoughtfully in her hand. “So how do you decide which people to put on that – what is it called, a whitelist?”_

_Harold nods. “Well, you might want to make it a list of senders you trust not to do any harm to your system.”_

_“That's not a very technical definition,” Grace says. “You can't measure trust.”_

_Harold strokes his thumb firmly over a good spot, and Grace sighs in relief. God, those shoes were a mistake._

_“The safest way would be to shield yourself from messages completely, I assume,” Harold says. “Allow no outside influence whatsoever. The question is if that is sustainable, in the long term.” He gives a little shrug. “Most people would rather live with the threat of harmful messages than to cut down communication completely.”_

_As good as the foot rub feels, Grace is a little too far away for her liking: she straightens and curls up at Harold's side, her legs tucked under her. Harold's arm slides around her, comfortable, familiar._

_Harold leans in to kiss her forehead. “Is your curiosity satisfied?”_

_“For now,” Grace says, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Just wait until I start asking about how databases work.”_

_Harold chuckles and presses a kiss to her head. He pulls her closer. “I can't wait,” he says._

–

Now.

Grace opens the door and Harold is there, like in a movie scene: pouring rain, his coat soaked and his hair wet, plastered to his head. He looks utterly miserable. “ _ _Grace,”__ he says, clutching the handle of his umbrella in a desperate grip.

She takes his coat, gets him a towel, makes him a hot cup of tea. For a moment, she makes herself forget who they are, what transpired between them: it seems funny, Harold getting soaked in the rain on his way home, shivering in her living room like a wet dog. But then she sits down next to him and he looks at her, clutching the mug of tea in his hands, and Grace suddenly remembers. _You were dead and I was, too. Something in me still is._

“I just. I very much wanted to see you,” Harold says. “I trained myself out of it for such a long time, always avoided getting too close, and now it's different, and I can't seem to be able to stay away.”

 _I didn't have that choice,_ Grace thinks. _Of choosing to come close or staying away._

“I don't know what to do,” Grace says. It's the only thing she can think of.

“It was never my intention to cause you pain,” he says, wrecked, miserable.

Grace feels like he said that before, or a variation of it. _But you did,_ she thinks. _You did._

“At that time, I had lost somebody very dear to me,” Harold says, he sets the mug on the table and folds his hands in his lap. “I couldn't bear the thought that something could happen to you, that I would be – responsible for your death as well.”

Grace tries to push beyond the tightness of her throat to say something when she feels it: the way his shoulders are shaking, little seismic shivers. For a moment, she thinks that it's the cold, the wet clothes, but then she sees his eyes. It's not the cold.

“I am so very sorry,” Harold says. His voice sounds like glass shards.

“Something in me broke apart when you died, and I have been trying to put it back together ever since,” Grace says.

Harold turns his head to her. His cheeks are wet, whether from the rain or something else, she cannot tell.

They sat on this couch many times: close, as lovers. Grace wishes that she could drink a potion or crawl down a rabbit hole, make herself return to that place where loving him was easy, instinctual.

“I missed you so much I forgot how to do anything else,” Grace says, watching the rain drip from his hair. The room is very quiet around them.

Harold opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. She remembers this, too: his frustration with the language of emotions, the complexities of human interaction, the lack of precision in both.

“We talked about firewalls, once,” Harold says.

The memory is a physical pain like a papercut. “Yes,” Grace says. She can feel the tears rising to her eyes, too. God, those lovely, lazy Sunday afternoons. “You told me about what kind of messages are allowed to get through. About the whitelist.”

Harold nods, watching the fabric of the couch darken with water stains. “I was very good at protecting myself. As I said, most people would rather live with a certain threat of harm than not letting any messages in at all. But that was not how I did it. My firewalls were, well. Impenetrable.”

Grace looks at the tension in his shoulders, the way he clenches his jaw. He looks like a bow about to snap.

“Yes,” she says.

Harold looks at her. “Nathan was one of the few people who were different. He was my whitelist, I suppose. Well. Nathan and you were.”

Grace can't help but reach out for him: her hand covers his skin, so cold and wet with rain. Harold slides their palms together like this is how they belong. Connected.

“When I lost Nathan, I didn't know how to go on. Complete system failure, if you will,” he says, something like humor flickering over his expression. “I had to rebuild everything from the ground up, with stronger defenses.”

“So you're saying that I was a weakness in your firewall?” Grace asks, frowning.

Harold squeezes her hand. “I am saying that there were only two people in my life that I trusted unconditionally,” Harold says. He looks like he is going to say more, but just ends up staring at the wall of her living room.

Grace's hand tightens on his. Their grip on each other is almost painful. “And one of them died.”

There are drops of water on his glasses, reflecting light, half-hiding his eyes. “I understand what it means to have your walls torn down by the loss of someone you trusted,” he says. “I know the ways that it has changed me, and I understand that it has changed you, too.”

“I need to rebuild my defenses,” Grace says. “From the ground up. Better firewalls.”

Harold's smile is unbearably sad. “Maybe you need to reconsider the names on _ _your__ whitelist. Maybe I shouldn't be one of them.”

The panic starts behind her sternum and works its way up into her throat. “I don't,” she starts, but the words are too big, too heavy. _ _I don't want to lose you again.__ “I want to forgive you,” she says, shivering like she was the one out in the cold. “I want to get to a place where I can forgive you, but I don't. I don't know if I can.”

Harold doesn't flinch. He turns her hand up where their palms are pressed together and kisses the back of her hand. The touch is electrifying, a hot spark against her skin.

“I will leave now,” he says. “I'm sorry for showing up like this.”

She walks behind him to the door, half numb, her hand thrumming where their bodies were joined. He leaves a small card on the desk by the door. “Take all the time you need,” Harold says.

Grace sees what will happen before it does: _she steps forward and pushes him against the wall. Her hands come up to cradle his face and she kisses him, hungry, aching, drinking in his rain-soaked skin, the familiar smell of him. They stumble into the bedroom and undress in a frenzy before she pushes him down again, his body cool and damp between her sheets. He says her name roughly, like a whisper or a plea, and she strains toward the warmth between them, buries herself in it, her face pressed against his throat._

In Grace's hallway, Harold opens the door to leave. Grace steps forward.

–

_Then._

_“Are you sure that's what you want?” Harold asks. He holds the padded cuffs away from him like they might bite._

_“Of course I am,” Grace says, sitting on the edge of the bed in her underwear. “I always wanted to give it another try, see if I like it.”_

_Harold looks distinctly uncomfortable. She pats the mattress beside her and he sits down, the cuffs resting in his lap._

_“I tried this with someone I barely knew, and the situation was... different. It made me feel a little panicky to be tied up, to be honest, and Sean immediately removed the handcuffs and the blindfold, and then it was perfectly fine. It just didn't work for me, it wasn't some kind of trauma, Harold. Now I'm just. Curious.” She smiles. “I'd like to try it again with you, I want. I want to give up control with you.”_

_Harold's hands tighten on the restraints at her words. She leans against his shoulder. “I do trust you, you know. I know that you're not going to hurt me, or take advantage. It feels... safe to think about doing this with you.”_

_Harold swallows. “I don't think I understand why you would want to repeat an experience like that,” he says._

_She runs her hand over his back, soothing. “It's okay if it's not, I don't know, great. I mean, it's fine if I'm underwhelmed, all 'Nope, still don't like this'.” She laughs, a little nervously. She has no idea why she decided to bring this up, purchase the cuffs and everything. It's like she can't accept a good thing without pushing at it.“I don't know how to explain it,” she says. “I want. I want to let myself fall and know that there is a soft place to land on. I thought that would work with Sean, but I didn't. I didn't quite believe it.” Grace moves a hand to Harold's neck, lets her fingertips run over the skin exposed by his shirt collar. “Now I'm sure that whatever happens – if I should get something out of this or not – I will be safe. I trust you.”_

_“Grace,” Harold says, almost choking on the word._

_“We don't have to do it, if you don't want to,” Grace says, leaning in to brush her lips against his cheek. “It was just a stupid thought, don't worry about it.”_

_Harold turns to her, his arm coming around her waist, pulling her close. “I want you to have everything you could possibly want,” he says, low and earnest, and something catches in her chest. “But I don't want to put you into a situation that causes you anxiety, or discomfort.”_

_“You always want everything to be perfect,” Grace says quietly. Something in his face shifts. She doesn't know where the thought came from. She takes the restraints from his lap and lets them fall to the side. “Forget I asked. I don't even know why I thought about it again after all of this time.”_

_Grace doesn't know how to explain it: that even if it didn't work for her, it wouldn't matter. The sight of the cuffs on the floor makes her heart rate pick up: her arms tied to the bedpost, Harold securing the restraints around her wrists, careful, caring, then leaning down to touch her, hold her close. She wants – She wants – She wants him to trust her like she trusts him._

_“Maybe you shouldn't force this,” Harold says. “The idea might appeal to you in principle, but not played out in reality.”_

_She swallows. That's not it, she wants to say. It's not about the restraints, it's not._

_“Let's forget that I brought it up,” Grace says, pulling him down to her, focusing on his face instead of the restraints down on the floor. “It doesn't matter.”_

_In the morning, she picks up the cuffs and puts them into the back of her drawer before she goes to make coffee. There is a thought ringing in her head like a bell. I want you to trust me like I trust you._

–

****PART II.** **

John looks like he's afraid of touching anything, of breaking some unspoken rule.

"Would you like something to drink?" Grace asks. Even while she says it she can tell that the question is too vague, almost prompting him to decline.

John shrugs. "I don't want to cause you any more trouble,” he says, careful not to bleed onto the couch.

Harold has brought John back to the apartment he shares with Grace after a mission that went pear-shaped. John looks like he was involved in a traffic accident. _ _Multiple__ times.

"You're not causing any trouble," Grace says instantly. She wants to help, but her medical knowledge doesn't extend far beyond putting a band-aid on a paper cut.

She thought _ _Harold's__ didn't, either, but apparently he has picked up a few skills on the way. She is itching to ask him if maybe he has a medical degree, if one of his identities is a doctor. What kind of doctor would Harold be? A neurologist, maybe. His office would be all dark, polished wood, with framed degrees on the wall. He'd speak softly, his white coat perfectly clean and pressed. Grace takes a deep breath. Better not to go there.

John winces. “Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure that this isn't how you imagined your Saturday night,” he says.

Harold finishes dressing a wound on John's arm. It looks like somebody cut the skin with a knife or razor blade, clean, parallel lines. There are purple and crimson marks around John's wrists. Some of them have oval shapes like fingers digging in. Grace shudders.

John lets Harold clean the wounds, wipe away the fresh blood. Grace flinches when Harold applies disinfectant, thinking about the sting of alcohol. John's face stays completely blank, like he doesn't even notice.

Harold uses a surgical suture set to close a deep cut, the silver needle penetrating skin. He handles the gleaming instruments with the same ease he exhibits when preparing a cup of tea: manipulating the needle with his instruments, tying knots in the air. Grace looks away, feeling a little nauseous. She leaves to putter around in the kitchen. There is a white noise rushing in her ears like she might faint. When she comes back, Harold applies sterile gauze to the cut, bandaging it up, mercifully clean and bloodless.

John looks at Harold like he is the only source of light in the room, but when Grace comes in, he tears his gaze away. He rolls down his sleeve and gives her a boyish smile, a little embarrassed. "It's not as bad as it looks," he says.

"I would very much disagree," Harold says, wrapping up the suture kit and putting the items he has been using back into the first-aid box: disinfectant, cotton swabs, antiseptic cream, bandages. "You just have a pain threshold that would make other people pass out on the spot."

Grace smiles. She knows that tone, that ' _ _We have discussed this many times and while I am clearly right you insist on disagreeing with me'__ voice.

"Are you hungry?" Grace asks John, on a whim. "Maybe I can convince you to eat something if I assure you that Harold was in no way involved in the preparations?"

Harold frowns at her. "I can cook," he says.

"Not if you operate under the assumption that food should be edible," Grace says.

John smiles. "I could eat," he says. There is something soft and sad about his face. He looks like he is in pain all of the time, a pain that has nothing to do with his bruises.

John tries to button his sleeve, but his fingers keep slipping. Harold reaches out and buttons John's sleeve for him, his fingers brushing the skin of John's wrist. Grace can see how some of the tension in John's back and shoulders is draining out of him; he relaxes visibly under Harold's touch.

When Harold walks into the kitchen to wash his hands, Grace corners him, her arms crossed over her chest. "What happened to him?"

Harold sighs. He takes off his glasses to rub at the bridge of his nose. "John infiltrated a local group of drug dealers. A teenager had been getting involved with their business and was in danger." He puts his glasses back on and looks at her. "I knew that it was dangerous, but there was no other way to keep tabs on them."

Grace pours herself a glass of wine. "So John got hurt protecting that teenager?"

John has excused himself to get cleaned up before dinner. Harold looks over his shoulder to the closed bathroom door. Grace thinks about John's bruised knuckles, the crusted blood on his split lip.

"He did manage to save the number, but unfortunately couldn't do so without exposing himself. The drug dealers demanded answers,” Harold says.

Grace feels bile burning in her throat. "They _ _tortured__ him?"

"The CIA teaches their agents techniques to use under the pressure," Harold says. "And as far as I know, John had a lot of opportunities to practice that particular skill set.”

She hands him the glass of wine. He looks like he could use some alcohol. Harold smiles when he takes the glass from her. The familiarity of it makes her ache.

“So you're saying he's used to torture?” Grace asks. She doesn't want to talk about this, doesn't want to imagine John tied to a chair with people hurting him. Then again, she doesn't know if she can bear _ _not__ talking about it.

“I hate to say it, but what John endured today was probably nothing out of the ordinary for him. He has, I have to assume, had much worse,” Harold says.

Grace wants to cry. She wants to smash something. She wants to find the people who put that look on John's face and give them a piece of her mind. “That's awful,” she says.

Harold puts an arm around her back. She rests her head against his shoulder and tries to blink the tears away. It won't help John that she feels sorry for him.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Harold says softly. “There's a reason I don't want you too closely involved with the numbers. The kind of violence and danger we face every day –”

“It's not suitable for a woman?” Grace asks. She straightens herself, dabbing at her eyes. The moment between them has passed, and she feels the familiar sting of annoyance. She should actually get some food ready before John comes back. She opens the fridge to select something.

“You know that's not what I mean,” Harold says. “There is no reason to bring that darkness into your life.”

“I could help,” Grace says, putting tupperware boxes with leftovers on the counter with more force than necessary. “I could stay in the library, maybe help you with researching the numbers. I could help out.”

“I am not going to expose you to that kind of danger,” Harold says, like it's a foregone conclusion.

She huffs a bitter laugh. “Oh right, I forgot. You make all the decisions about my life, not me. How stupid of me.”

Grace pushes the door of the microwave shut forcefully just as John enters the kitchen. She turns around to him, putting on a smile like armor. “How do you feel about lasagna, John?”

\--

John eats like a starving man. He makes a point out of telling Grace how much he enjoys the food, sips his beer and listens to their conversation. Harold and Grace keep up a pleasant stream of small talk and fond teasing: it's easy to slip on their shared intimacy like a glove, cover up all the things they do not say to each other.

“Pretty sure this is the second best lasagna I've ever had,” John says, polishing off his third serving.

“What was the best one?” Grace asks, smiling at him across the table. She resists the urge to pile more lasagna onto his plate.

Harold moves his hand closer to hers on the table, but Grace reaches for her wine glass instead. She isn't in the mood for small reconciliations.

Something shifts in John's expression. He blinks quickly, reaching for the napkin and dabbing at the corners of his mouth. “My mom made the best one,” he says, finally.

“That is an excellent answer,” Grace says. “And I'm very flattered.”

John meets her gaze. Grace feels like he has given her something, a small secret pressed into the palm of her hand.

–

Grace can hear Harold talking to John in the hallway, trying to convince him to spend the night in the guest room.

“You should get some rest,” Harold says. “We'll need you in good shape when the next number comes in.”

Grace takes off her earrings and watch, squeezes a dollop of lotion into her hand and rubs it into her skin.

“I'm fine, Harold,” John says. “You really don't have to do all of this.”

There is a moment of silence.

“Is there a reason why you felt like you had to antagonize a man who was already putting a knife to your skin?” Harold asks, voice lowered, but still loud enough to carry over to the bedroom.

Grace holds her breath.

“I needed to make sure that he was concentrating on me, not Charlie. He's a good kid, just hung out with the wrong crowd,” John says. His voice sounds raspy, like his throat is sore. “I got myself caught, it was a stupid mistake. My own fault.”

“So you thought that you deserved a beating?” Harold asks, clipped and merciless.

She has never heard him sound like that: analytic, like he takes John apart and looks at the pieces individually, turning them around in his hands.

“Does it matter?” John asks.

“It matters if I have to believe that you take unnecessary risks in the field, or show a reckless disregard for your own life,” Harold says.

“I got the job done, didn't I?” John asks. He sounds tired in a way that sleep can't cure.

Grace turns away from the door and climbs under the covers. She turns off the lights. A few minutes later, when Harold comes in, she pretends to be asleep.

\--

"You realize that he's in love with you, don't you?" Grace asks one sunny afternoon when they're walking in the park. Harold holds her hand and occasionally looks down at their entwined fingers in wonder.

"I beg your pardon?" Harold says, laughing, but she has seen the spark of guilt flickering over his face. It's important to look at him when they talk: he has no obvious tells, at least none that she has identified so far, but sometimes she can catch that split-second before he smoothes his expression into careful neutrality.

"You know exactly what I mean. The way he looks at you, how he puts his life into your hands. You can't just bring him over for dinner every other week, have him sleep in the guest room and then send him off to get beaten up some more."

"Grace, this job has certain dangers that we can't avoid," Harold says, for what feels like the millionth time. "It is a necessary evil. He has the skills to handle these situations, and while I don't enjoy putting him in harm's way, he needs to be out in the field to protect the numbers.”

"It's a miracle that he didn't get himself killed so far, miserable as he is,” Grace says. “That state of mind isn't exactly helping with feeling alert and focused.” She would know.

Harold lets go of her hand. He actually has the nerve to look insulted. "John is not _ _miserable__ ," he says.

Grace huffs. "No, he is just greedy for every touch and kind word from you. A kindness, by the way, that you make sure to dole out in careful doses.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Harold says.

“Of course you do. The way you keep him at arm's length? God forbid that you might show him some affection, show him that he's important to you.”

“What could that possibly help?” Harold asks. “So it will be harder on both of us when one of us inevitably dies in the pursuit of this line of work?”

Grace takes a deep breath. It _ _hurts__ , but at least they're talking. She will take this over cheerful small talk any day. “But you're not dead, and he's not, either. You're spending your days saving the lives of people, Harold. He is your closest friend, the closest thing you have to a family, and you refuse to acknowledge your feelings on the grounds of, what? That you could die at any moment? That it would complicate things? These all seem like excuses to me.”

“It's not fair to make yourself a part of people's lives only to leave them,” Harold says.

Anger rolls through her like a wave. “Do you _ _think__ , Harold?”

It takes him a second, but then realization washes over his face. He looks horrified. “I didn't mean --”

“No, you never do. Things around you just _ _happen__ ,” Grace says. “And you're right. When it comes to leaving people, I bow to your expertise.”

She turns around, not waiting for him to follow.

–

John insists on helping with the dishes: it's a good look on him, domestic, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands wrist-deep in dishwater, laughing at something Grace said.

“It's nice when you spend the night here,” Grace says, taking a plate from him and drying it off with a dishrag before putting it away.

John ducks his head. “I always enjoy being here,” he says. His expression darkens. “I feel bad about encroaching on your life like that, though. You get so little time with Harold as it is.”

Grace puts the dishrag down on the counter. “John,” she says.

He turns to look at her. Grace moves her hand to his arm, placing it on his elbow. He doesn't flinch from her, but he doesn't seem as relaxed as just a moment ago.

"Look, I know that you care a lot about Harold. I know that you love him."

John's eyes widen. He looks like she backhanded him across the face.

"It's fine, it really is," Grace says, quickly, squeezing his arm.

"I would never do anything that could affect your relationship with him," John says, his voice rough. The worst part is that he doesn't even argue the point, like him loving Harold is so clearly, undeniably true. She has already grasped the levels of suffering John Reese will endure for other people, and without intervention, he will probably be miserable about his unrequited longing forever.

"And he doesn't _ _owe__ me anything. Neither do you,” John says, managing a smile that looks physically painful.

"He cares deeply about you, John,” Grace says.

John looks down at the floor, blinking rapidly.

“And now that I've spent all this time with you, I understand why.”

He takes a deep breath like he's trying to calm himself down. He is standing with his hands on the sink, water and foam dripping off his fingers. He looks so horribly unhappy that it makes her heart clench in sympathy.

“Can I give you a hug?” Grace asks. She is afraid that she's being too forward, that he might bolt, but it seems right to offer it, like something he might need.

John's mouth twitches, then he nods. She steps forward and puts her arms around him. John's arms are awkwardly stretched out, his hands still wet. She rests her head against his chest. His heart is beating rapidly.

“You should know that there is a place here for you, should you want it,” Grace says. “There will always be room for you in Harold's life.”

"It's your life, too," he says, sounding choked. He cautiously puts a hand on her back.

Grace moves back a little so she can look up at him, but she keeps her hands resting lightly against his sides. "It is. And I have decided that I want Harold in it, along with everything that entails. That means the numbers, the mission, _ _you.__ All of this time, you protected him, you've been his family. And you keep risking your life and well-being for other people and I just think that you deserve a bit of happiness for yourself.”

“Grace,” John says.

“I don't want to overwhelm you with this,” Grace says. “But Harold and I, we've always been open to seeing other people when we were together.”

John swallows, but he doesn't say anything.

“It was academic, because we rarely met people we'd be interested in, or we'd even consider letting into our lives,” Grace says. “But I know him, and I know the way he feels about you. I know the way _ _I__ feel about you, and it's just. I want you to know that you can have this, if you want. That you can be with Harold, or... both of us.” She feels herself blush. John feels warm and solid under her hands, he's clearly in good shape. This close, she can see his dark lashes fanning against his cheek, the gray at his temples. It makes her a little bit lightheaded. “I mean, I don't know if you'd even, well. _ _Want__ me, I guess.”

The look on John's face is pure surprise. “Do I --” He laughs, incredulous. “Of _ _course,__ I. I just never thought...” This close, she can see a yellowing bruise on his jaw, the shadow of stubble on it. She feels reckless, standing this close to John while Harold is sitting in the living room, listening to every word. She knows that Harold will never make the first step, and somebody has to. John searches her face. “Are you sure that this is what you want?” He asks.

Instead of an answer, she stands up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth.

–

She holds John's hand when they step into the living room. Harold looks up from his laptop. He doesn't look surprised at all, like he had assumed that Grace would take charge like this sooner or later. They share a look, then Harold nods briefly, like that settles the issue.

“John, why don't you sit down with me,” Harold says, oddly formal.

John's hand in hers is sweaty, he radiates nervousness. He nods and sits down in some distance to Harold on the couch. Grace takes the place next to him. She doesn't let go of his hand. “If this is all a bit much for now --” she starts.

John squeezes her hand. “It's just unexpected. In a good way,” he adds quickly.

“John,” Harold says.

John turns his head to him. Then Harold puts a hand against John's cheek, and Grace can hear the small sigh of relief John makes.

“Would you like to stay with us tonight?” Harold asks.

The implication is obvious. Grace bites her lip. John is trembling with something that might be excitement, or fear, or something else.

“Yes,” John manages. “Harold, _ _please__.”

“Of course, John, anything you need,” Harold says, almost distractedly, and leans in to kiss him.

–

Fooling around on the couch is surprisingly delightful: with John between them, both Harold and Grace can lean in to steal kisses, curl up against his side. John soaks up their touches like a sponge, letting himself be kissed and petted, his thigh pressed against Grace's.

Grace holds on to John's hand, lets her fingers wander over the delicate skin of his wrist and circle the hollow of his palm with her fingertips. John has a look of sheer amazement on his face. When Harold touches him, she can feel John's body shivering with it.

Harold nuzzles his jaw. He seems content with the direction the night is taking. Grace hasn't been oblivious to the way he looks at the pale skin of John's throat, the strong, muscular line of his shoulders. Grace can relate: John is gorgeous, handsome in a way that makes her insides flutter with excitement.

“Should we move this to the bedroom?” Harold asks. He sounds a little out of breath from kissing John. His neck is flushed and warm, and there is something hungry in his expression, like he found a taste for something that he didn't know he could have.

John looks like he is going to have a _ _stroke.__ “Please,” he says.

“Sounds like a great idea,” Grace says. She moves John's wrist up to her mouth, kisses the bruises.

–

In retrospect, things went _ _way too well.__ Grace had assumed that their little makeout session had gotten John sufficiently relaxed, but as soon as he enters their bedroom, something clouds his expression and the line of his back tenses up. He looks nervous again, like he got caught doing something that he wasn't supposed to do.

Harold places a hand against John's neck and pulls him down for a kiss: brief, possessive. "Take off your shirt for me," he says.

Grace is glad that Harold is calm and unhurried. She feels a nervous energy building inside her, that feeling of impatience when you're drumming your hand on the steering wheel, waiting for the traffic jam to dissolve.

John quickly undoes the row of buttons, apparently glad to be given something to do. She has noticed that he works best when given clear instructions. John is always glad to follow orders.

Grace turns her back to Harold and holds her hair out of the way so he can undo her zipper. They haven't spoken much, just traded looks and gestures, silent things that pass between them. John needs words, orders and tasks like a lifeline that he can hold on to.

It's obvious that John's wildest dreams have come true: he looks dazed and a little overwhelmed, like he can't believe that he will finally get what he wants. It's in the way he looks at Harold, the devotion that shines through his every gesture, but also in the way he looks at her, touching her hair and kissing her tenderly, thoroughly. She isn't just an intermediary in this, or a condition John has to accept to get closer to Harold. John touches her with reverence, _ _desire__ , and it makes her feel warm and tingly all over.

Harold pulls the zipper down all the way and Grace's dress slides down her body, the smooth fabric pooling around her feet. Harold leans down to kiss the nape of her neck. She shudders. He has always been good at this, giving her pleasure: he approaches it with the same focus he directs to his work: a mere concept of cause and effect, observing the results of an action and replicating it for optimal results.

“Thank you,” Harold whispers against her skin, and she understands: __thank you for making this happen when I didn't know how to.__

"How should we do this?" Grace asks. She bites her lip when John throws his shirt over a chair. There is a map of scars on John's skin: a jagged edge that runs down all the way to his hip, a criss cross pattern on his back, lines and patterns of scar tissue.

He steps close to her. "Just tell me what you like," John says. Grace swallows. She could think of a few things she'd like, actually. She notices the way his gaze roams over her body, taking her in: the black lace of her underwear, the swell of her breasts.

"I'd like to touch you, if that's okay,” Grace says.

Harold is standing behind her, watching. John looks at him, like he needs Harold to say something to him. The expression on Harold's face softens. “You are allowed to have this, John. You don't need my permission, and you wouldn't be here if Grace didn't want you.”

John smiles, a little bashful. "Yeah," he says to her. "I'd like you to touch me.”

Grace lets her hands wander over his skin, exploring thoroughly. The scar tissue feels smooth, different than skin. Some scars are puckered and thick, others thin like cobwebs. John sighs. He stands perfectly still, his eyes glassy and unfocused. Grace strokes her hands over his chest and John gasps when she brushes her thumb over a nipple. Ah, interesting.

"Sit down on the bed," Grace says.

John opens his eyes and blinks at her, then he walks over to the bed and sits down. Grace slides into his lap, straddling him. She kisses him and runs her hands over his back. John makes a pleased noise against her mouth, his arms coming around her to support her weight.

Harold has taken off his vest and shoes and sits down on the bed behind John, watching. After a moment, John turns his head and lets Harold kiss him. Grace wonders how long John has been in love with Harold, how desperately he has wished to be allowed to _ _touch.__

Then she has an idea. “Sit down with your back against the headboard,” she tells Harold.

Harold's mouth twitches, but he plays along. John gives her a curious look, his hands stroking the skin of her back.

“Would you like to go down on him?” She asks John.

John draws in a sharp breath. She shifts a little on his lap until she can feel the hard press of his erection against her. John hisses, arms tightening around her. “Yes,” he says, eyelids fluttering.

“Did you fantasize about it?” Grace asks. She is stroking his chest, circling a nipple with her fingers. John whimpers. “How you'd get down on your knees for him, sucking his cock?”

John's hips are pushing up against her, and she rubs herself against the bulge in his pants. His mouth is parted and his eyes are closed. She rubs a nipple between thumb and forefinger and he thrusts against her, panting.

“Did you get yourself off thinking about blowing him, imagining how it would feel?”

She looks over John's shoulder and meets Harold's gaze, dark with arousal.

John opens his eyes. “Yes,” he says, licking his lips.

Grace shivers. It's unbearably hot, seeing him like this, but the vulnerability of it makes her ache for him, too: it's like he's helplessly telling her the truth, admitting to his deepest desires like he has no defenses left.

Grace leans in and kisses him deeply, moving one hand up to stroke his neck and pet his hair. “Now you get to do it,” she says, when they part. “You get to have everything you want.”

John makes a soft, desperate noise at that. Grace climbs out of his lap and then sits down on the bed so she can watch them both. John crawls over to Harold on all fours, leaning in to kiss him. John's erection is straining against the fabric of his pants, and Harold slides a hand into John's hair, combs through it. Grace slides her hand between her legs, touching herself.

“Undress him,” Grace says to John.

John undoes Harold's tie with careful fingers, slides the knot open. He unbuttons Harold's shirt, and Harold leans forward, lets John slide it down his arms.

“You should probably fold that over a chair so it doesn't get wrinkled,” Grace says innocently.

Harold gives her a look. “Will I ever live this down?” He asks, probably realizing that she's trying for some levity and playing along. If she thinks too much about the look in John's eyes, the way he has been starved of tenderness for so long, it will only make her sad.

John carefully folds the shirt, grinning. “I sense that there is an anecdote to go with that.”

“There really isn't,” Harold says, just as Grace says: “He stopped in the middle of sex once to like, put his suit on this special wooden hanger.”

John actually laughs at that, a rich deep sound, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement. It suits him.

“It was that one time, and it was a very nice suit that will _ _stretch__ at the shoulders if it is not put away properly,” Harold says primly.

“I was _ _naked__ ,” Grace says. “In your bed. I am offended that you would prioritize a suit over that.”

John looks at her, his gaze dropping down to where her fingers slide under the waistband of her underwear. “I can't think of a suit that would be worth that,” John says.

She smiles at him, flirty, promising. “See? John has excellent priorities.”

John seems pleased by that: he's smiling when he goes to work on Harold's belt buckle and then unzips his pants.

“I am glad that you're so amused by this, _ _ah.__ ” Harold's eyelids flutter when John noses at the swell of his cock through the fabric of his boxers. John bites his lip and leans over Harold to kiss him again, like he can't help himself.

“There's a spot on the side of his throat,” Grace says, circling her clit with her fingers. Fuck, they look hot together.

John kisses Harold's jaw and then moves lower, pressing his lips against the skin above the jugular.

“A little lower,” Grace instructs, and then Harold sighs, hands tightening on the sheets. She grins.“There you go.”

Harold closes his eyes while John kisses and licks at the delicate skin. Grace crawls a little closer until she's sitting right next to Harold. “Use your teeth,” she tells John.

Harold curses softly. John nibbles and bites, soothing the sting with his tongue, and Harold makes little, pleased noises.

“Hmh, good boy,” Grace says. She places her hand under John's chin and turns his face towards her. John kisses her obediently. When she lets him go, he slides down Harold's body and positions himself between his legs.

Grace leans against Harold's shoulder and looks down at John. “Christ, you're gorgeous,” she says.

John looks up from under his lashes, his lips red and swollen. He doesn't say anything, just takes Harold's cock out and closes a hand around it, sucking the tip into his mouth.

Harold groans and takes Grace's hand, holding on. “ _ _John__ ,” he says, his voice rough and hoarse with the word.

“Make him wait for it,” Grace says.

Harold makes an incoherent noise. “What have I ever done to you,” he mutters, breathing heavily, arching into John's touch as much as his hip and back will allow.

 _ _You left me__ , Grace thinks, irrationally, stupidly: she can't say that, not even in jest. She decides to focus on John instead: he is not an amateur, and isn't _ _that__ an interesting thought. She wonders if there were boyfriends, hookups with strangers. She wonders if someone took care of him after he got them off.

“You're doing so well, John,” Grace says, because she thinks that he might like to hear it. What she doesn't expect is that he sighs around Harold's cock, his whole body relaxing, like she has reached down to pet his head. “Stop for a moment,” she says.

Harold groans. He looks at her with a pleading expression. There is a horrible little voice in the back of her head that says: _ _That's right, let him suffer a little.__

John lets Harold's cock slide out of his mouth and sits back on his heels.

“Good things come to those who wait. No pun intended re: coming,” Grace says. Harold groans in frustration. She kisses the top of Harold's nose, disentangles her hand and crawls over to John.

“Hey,” John says.

“Hey,” Grace says, reaching around to undo the clasp of her bra. “Take off your pants.”

John doesn't hesitate: he swiftly undoes his belt and disposes of his pants somewhere beside the bed. Grace pulls off her bra and then lets her hands explore some more, slides her palms from his broad shoulders down over the vertebrae of his spine. She can hear Harold's quick intake of breath behind them. She's sure that he's watching avidly.

John's gaze flicks away for a second, like he is unable to leave Harold wanting. It makes Grace suddenly, irrationally angry that Harold denied him this for so long, that he didn't realize how much John needed to be touched, to _ _connect.__ “Just for a minute,” Grace says softly, stroking a hand over John's cheek. He melts into the touch and she leans in to brush her lips against his.

Harold coughs pointedly, and Grace smiles against John's mouth. “Something you'd like to say, Harold?”

When she turns around, Harold is squirming on the bed, cheeks flushed, his cock wet at the tip where he is dripping precome. The image is strikingly erotic, and Grace swallows hard.

“Please,” Harold says, finally. He really must be desperate if he is begging.

“Go on,” Grace tells John.

Eagerly, John resumes his position. Harold breathes a sigh of relief. John closes one hand around Harold's cock and then leans down to take him into his mouth again. Harold is apparently beyond dignity at this point: he is moaning, soft, needy sounds, his hands clenching and unclenching on the sheets.

Grace leans in to whisper to John, instruct him, and it doesn't take long until Harold says “John, please, I'm close, I'm –” and comes. John swallows around him and licks him clean after.

John looks accomplished, proud. Harold looks _ _stunned__ , his glasses fogged and knocked askew. It makes Grace feel tender towards him, and she reaches out to straighten his glasses, comb through his mussed-up hair.

“You look content,” she says.

“Hmh,” Harold says, petting John's head.

Before John has a chance to feel insecure about something, Grace decides to lean in close to whisper into his ear. “Would you like to fuck me?”

She can _ _see__ the full-body shiver that runs through him at the words. John nuzzles at her throat, hiding his face. “Yes,” he says hoarsely.

Grace moves to the side of the bed and produces a condom from the nightstand drawer. Harold stretches out behind them, all glowy and post-coital. He props up a pillow behind him, probably so that he can get a better view.

“We'll continue without you, if you don't mind,” Grace says loftily.

“Please do,” Harold says.

Grace scoots closer and tugs at John's boxers. “Off,” she says, grinning, and lies down on her back, removing her panties and tossing them to the side. John is naked when he leans over her, and she pulls him down, lets their bodies slide together.

John hums contentedly, stroking and kissing her, his cock hard against her thigh. He braces himself on his arms so he can mouth at her breasts, tease her nipples with his tongue. Grace gasps, her hips pushing against him. He touches her with such awe that it makes her chest feel tight. “That feels so good,” she says, and his face lights up at the words.

John kisses down her stomach, nosing at the curls between her legs. He looks up at her, asking permission.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Grace says, her voice thick with arousal.

John smirks, that irresistible expression, and urges her to put her legs over his shoulders, settling in. Grace feels guilty for a moment that John is getting both of them off instead of the other way around, but John looks glad, _ _glowing__ at the praise and every noise he can tease from them. He puts his mouth on her and Grace forgets about absolutely everything. He knows how to do this, too. Her hands tighten on John's shoulders, fingernails digging in when he sucks at her clit.

“Sorry,” Grace mutters, unclenching her hands. She wonders if she has left little half-moon shaped marks on his skin, but John only turns his head to kiss her thigh.

“It's fine,” he says, his mouth slick and wet, and Grace shudders and squirms beneath him.

Harold doesn't say a word, so Grace just concentrates on John, his head bobbing between her legs, his clever tongue taking her to the brink. He gets her off like that, a sweet, white-hot shudder of an orgasm. After, John wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

Grace sits up and presses the foil package into his hand. With her other hand, she reaches down to stroke him, run her thumb over the head of his cock. John whimpers, pushing into her touch. He must be aching by now, desperate to come. He puts on the condom with steady hands.

“Come here,” Grace says, leaning back again. Then his body is covering hers, a comforting weight on top of her. She reaches down between their bodies and closes her hand around John's cock again, jerking him slowly.

“Close,” John says through gritted teeth. “Don't know how long I'll last.”

“Okay,” Grace says, spreads her legs wider and guides him in.

John makes a desperate noise when she wraps her legs around him. “Oh god,” he says, his mouth warm against her throat. He moves with her, follows her urgent rhythm, the muscles of his back shifting under her hands.

Grace wonders how long it has been since someone touched him intimately. She strokes the nape of his neck, pulls him close to kiss him, gasp into his mouth. “Yes, that's it,” Grace says.

His hand slides between them and he finds her clit, and that's all it takes to make her shudder and fall apart. She closes her eyes and lets the sensation wash over her, her whole body vibrating with it.

Once the pleasant haze has lifted, she realizes that John is still moving in her with shallow thrusts, his face tense with concentration like he's waiting for something, like he needs – _ _oh.__

“It's okay,” Grace says, lifting her hands to his face. His cheeks are wet. “It's okay, John, you're allowed. You're _ _allowed.__ Come for me.”

His hips jerk and then he makes a sob like it was punched out of him. Grace strokes his back soothingly, pets his head where it is resting against her shoulder. “It's fine,” she says, her lips pressed against his temple. “You're doing so well, you're so good.”

Harold looks at them with an unbearable sadness on his face, like he didn't know, like he didn't _ _know.__

–

Grace is angry with Harold for about a week: for spending so much time with John and not figuring out what he needed most, for not understanding the depth of his devotion.

 _ _There's so much love bottled up in him,__ Grace thinks, _ _he just needs someone to give it to.__

After their first night together, John had looked like he half-expected them to kick him out: he only relaxed when Harold was curled up against his side and Grace was lying with her head pillowed on his chest.

She makes a point out of spoiling John after that: cuddling up with him on the couch, making him go on long walks with her, tending to his injuries when he gets hurt in the field. Grace sees to it that John spends the nights with them, wedged between them in their bed. John seems reluctant to take the place in their middle, like he's afraid of putting distance between Harold and her. Grace tells him that he's being an idiot, and he ducks his head and pulls her close, like he can't bear the slightest bit of air between them.

After a while, Grace doesn't remember _ _not__ living this way: John's solid warmth next to her, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, Harold holding her hand, curled up on John's other side.

Grace spends her Sunday mornings in bed with John, when Harold insists on getting up stupidly early to get work done. They drink black coffee and wrap the covers around them and nap in the rectangles of sunshine that the windows throw onto the bed. John is tactile, affectionate, greedy for touch. He is generous in bed, delighted when he makes Grace shiver, gets Harold to sound incoherent, babbling.

There is a part of Grace that wants to keep John in the comfortable little bubble of their home: safe, fed and cared for, curled up between them. There is another part of her that knows that John needs it, the work, the numbers, his purpose. She tries hard not to resent Harold for taking risks with John's life when John is already so willing to give himself up for the cause, lacking in basic self preservation instincts.

She tries hard not to resent Harold for a lot of things.

–

The next time Harold brings John home, his lips are blue and he's dripping water, his body shaking uncontrollably. “He jumped into the water at the docks to save a number,” Harold says, quickly, and then: “We couldn't wait for the ambulance.”

It's January.

Grace drags John along to the bathroom. His hand is terribly cold in hers. “Take off your clothes,” she says, her voice conveying a certainty and determination that she does not feel.

John's fingers are too numb and shaky, so she undoes the buttons for him, peels him out of his ruined suit. Grace takes off her shoes, jeans and shirt and steps under the spray with him, gets the water nice and hot. She is still wearing her underwear but she doesn't care: she just washes the rest of that mucky water off him, stands with him under the spray with her hands against his chest, her mascara running down her cheeks. John feels so _ _cold__ under her hands.

After a moment she realizes that the sobs she hears are hers and not his.

–

Later, she towels John dry, makes him put on the clean clothes that have materialized on the edge of the bathtub, and takes him to bed with a few extra blankets.

Harold brings hot soup for them to eat: chicken soup, homemade, her mother's recipe. She forgot that she still had some of it stored in the freezer. Now Grace knows what Harold has been doing while she and John occupied the bathroom.

“I'm fine“, John says, placing the empty bowl on the nightstand. “I've had worse.”

Grace pulls the blanket tighter around him and leans against his shoulder. He kisses the top of her head. “I'm fine,” he says. Grace can't stop thinking about how cold his skin felt, his pale, blue lips. __You could have been dead__ , she thinks. __I could have lost you, too.__

Grace nods, not trusting herself to speak. Harold stands in the doorway, the empty bowls stacked in his hands. She isn't sure if he looks at John or at her. For a moment, it looks like he might join them on the bed, pull John close and place a comforting hand against his neck, but then Harold turns around and walks down the corridor, disappearing into the kitchen.

If Harold were a magician, Grace thinks, his specialty would be his disappearing acts. She wraps John up in as much warmth as she can manage and holds him close.

–

John's time is split between working the numbers and living at their home, and the place should feel busier, crowded, maybe. The truth is that the opposite is the case: it's like the rooms have gotten bigger; there seems so much space between Harold and herself now. Grace sits on the couch with her sketchpad and Harold sits next to her, reading, typing away on his laptop, but it's all different now. _ _She's__ different.

It's like something inside of herself has shriveled up and died, and she wants it back, she wants it _ _back.__

A little after ten, John comes back from whatever he has been doing. He grins at them, his boyish, delighted smile, and Grace feels like finally she can breathe again, like whatever heavy thing existed between Harold and her, John's presence simply chased away.

–

John getting fucked is probably the hottest thing Grace has ever seen: the way he __melts__ under Harold's touch, how he gives himself up completely. He is lying on his stomach with his face pressed against the sheets, gasping softly.

Harold takes his sweet time, and John pushes back against him, wanting more, rolling his hips. “Shh, I'll get you there, be patient,” Harold says, moving on top of John.

John whimpers, his hips thrusting against the sheets. Grace kneels next to him, strokes his face and runs a hand through his hair. John pushes his head into her touch like a cat and mouths at her fingers.

Harold has lost flexibility and strength after the accident, but he keeps up a steady rhythm in his limited range of movement, fucking John steadily. After a while, he needs to take a break and withdraws. John keens, his hips jerking sharply, seeking contact. Harold replaces his cock with his fingers and that makes John gasp and rut against the sheets. Harold works him until John moans and spills over the sheets, his whole body going limp.

Harold's face looks tense, like he's in pain: Grace wonders if he has overworked his hip and thigh. John can't see him, he is passed out on the bed, dead to the world.

“You boys need to take better care of yourselves,” Grace says. She runs her fingers over Harold's jaw, the scar tissue at the nape of his neck.

She loves him, she still loves him so much, but it's different, too: it's like her heart is hurting with it, with glass shard affection for him and John.

–

John has nightmares. He bolts upright in the middle of the night, his sweaty shirt clinging to his body. He doesn't scream, which, somehow, makes it even worse: like he taught himself to keep quiet even in the face of terror.

“Let him be,” Harold had said, the first time it had happened.

Grace had looked at him suspiciously. Harold's strategy of just letting John have his space hasn't worked out too well so far: John had plenty of space to be miserable and lonely in. Grace's first instinct was to gather John up in her arms and comfort him. “Is it okay if I touch you?” She asked.

Something complicated happened on John's face. “Give me a moment, okay?” He said, the corners of his mouth twitching in a bad imitation of a smile. He got out of bed and walked down the hallway, then turned on the tap in the kitchen.

Harold looked at her in a way that felt way too much like __I told you so.__

By now, Grace has learned that John wants to be left alone right after, rebuild his defenses. He gets up to shower, or to drink a glass of water in the silence of the kitchen, then he comes back to bed. At that point, Grace is absolutely sure that he wants to be touched, or held, but feels awkward about asking for it.

This time, John comes back to bed in a clean shirt. He kisses Harold on the mouth and does the same with Grace. “Sorry, didn't mean to wake you.”

He lies down under the covers. Grace waits.

“Are you alright?” Harold asks. His voice is already thick with sleep.

“I'm fine, Harold,” John says instantly, the words a bad habit like chewing on your nails.

Grace wants to reach out for him so badly, but she waits until he lets her know that he wants her to. Harold's breaths slow down as he is falling asleep again.

After two or three eternities, John pats the space right next to him on the mattress and murmurs “Come here.”

Grace presses herself against him, wraps her arms around his chest. He smells like soap and laundry detergent, and there's stubble on his chin. “Bad one?” she asks.

John tucks her in, brushes her hair away from her face. “Not one of my best memories,” he says.

Grace draws circles on his chest with her fingertips. “When I was a kid, I never wanted to go back to sleep after a nightmare,” she says. “I'd keep myself awake for hours, and when I finally admitted to myself that I was too tired to stay up any longer, I took all of my stuffed animals into bed with me.”

John chuckles. “Was there still room for you in the bed?”

“Barely,” Grace says, smiling. She curls up closer to him, kisses the strip of skin exposed over the collar of his t shirt. “You're safe here,” she says.

He exhales a shaky breath. “It was about teeth,” he says. “If you eliminate a target –” He shakes his head. “I shouldn't tell you these things.”

Grace sits up. “No, I want to hear it. I can handle it,” she says. She looks over at Harold, firmly asleep. “You can tell me.”

John averts his eyes. “If you kill someone, they need you to bring back proof. Molars are very common.”

Grace shudders at the thought, but she keeps her gaze fixed on John.

“I keep having this dream where I'm supposed to be pulling teeth, but there's so much blood. And I keep thinking that a dead body shouldn't bleed this much. So much blood, I'll never – I don't think I'll ever wash it off. And then I have all of these teeth in the palm of my hand, rattling around like coins.”

Grace doesn't know what to say to that. Maybe there isn't anything to say. She hugs him, wraps her arms around him and holds him close.

“Thank you,” John says, softly, even though she has no idea what for.

–

John and Harold work the numbers, and Grace stays at home and paints and reads and tries not to lose her mind with worry.

One day, John comes home wound up and jumpy, with dark circles under his eyes.

“Harold is still at the library,” Grace says. She looks at John. “What _ _happened__ to you?”

“Long story,” John says. “Didn't sleep much.” He runs a hand through his hair. He looks groggy. “I'm still too wired to rest. Maybe I should go for a run, tire myself out.”

Grace has seen him in moods like this: feeling guilty about something, running on adrenaline and coffee, drop dead exhausted but unable to settle down and rest.

“Shower,” Grace says, using her no-nonsense voice. “Then you lie down on the bed and wait for me.”

A look of immense relief passes over John's face. “Okay,” he says.

–

When she walks into the bedroom, John is on his stomach on the bed, a towel slung around his hips, chest bare. His hair is wet and dark and shiny. Drops of water run down his neck and shoulders.

Grace sits down next to him on the bed. “Hey,” she says. She follows the trail of the droplets all the way down his spine. John shivers. “I'm going to remove that towel now, okay?”

John nods wordlessly. Grace loosens the knot and then pulls it free, leaving John completely exposed in front of her. She starts with his neck and shoulders, runs her hands over the skin, feels for knots that she can loosen up. John sighs in relief. He makes little noises when she hits a sore spot and digs in. Grace strokes along his arms and legs, presses kisses to the nape of his neck.

“If Harold were here –” Grace starts.

John raises his head. “You're doing great, don't worry about it. I feel much better already.” He sounds way too cheerful, like he's trying to convince them both.

“If Harold were here,” Grace repeats, undeterred, “He would fuck you. And it would help you to let go.”

John licks his lips. “Yeah,” he says roughly.

“Is that what you want?” Grace asks. She watches him, feels the way he tenses under her hands. “There is no wrong answer,” she adds, quickly.

John releases a shaky breath like a confession.

–

She fingers him, at first. She uses lots of lube like she has seen Harold do, prepares John carefully even when he's squirming beneath her. Her hands are unsteady, but she keeps going, determined. “Tell me if something doesn't feel good, okay?”

John relaxes for her, makes himself go pliant. Grace feels sick at the thought of hurting him, so she takes her time, lets him adjust to the stretch until she has one, then two fingers in. John is pliant under her hands. She feels for any change in texture until there is the swell of something beneath her fingertip.

John whines, pushing back. “ _ _Yes__ ,” he gasps, clenching around her.

She massages that sweet spot while John is moaning beneath her, muttering _ _please, please__ under his breath. There is something raw about his need, like an open wound.

After a while, Grace produces one of the toys from Harold's collection and applies lube to it, then turns on the vibration setting. John whines at the first touch of it against his perineum. When she pushes it into him, fucks him with it, he starts to sob.

“Ssh, it's alright,” Grace says, caressing the small of John's back. She looks up to see Harold standing in the half-darkness of the hallway, looking at them. She meets Harold's gaze for a moment, then turns her attention back to John. “I've got, you, John, I'm right here,” she says.

John clenches around the toy, hands fisted into the sheets. His sobs are muffled by the fabric. Grace reaches around to close her hand around John's cock, hot and heavy in her palm, and rubs under the head with her thumb. John's whole body tenses like a piece of string pulled tight, and then he comes and comes and comes.

–

“I love him,” Grace tells Harold one day. Harold doesn't look surprised, more like she told him something that he already knew. “I love him and I'm _ _scared__ for him.”

“This job – ” Harold starts.

Grace shakes her head. “I'm scared for him because he needs you so much, and you. You're very far away, sometimes.”

Harold stirs his tea. “I allowed myself to get close to you, and then I hurt you in ways I can never undo.”

She meets his gaze. “Don't use me as an excuse,” she says. “You haven't monopolized bad life choices.”

Harold smirks at that. “You're astonishing,” he says. They look at each other across the coffee table. __On some days,__ Grace thinks, __this house feels more haunted than on others.__

“You sound surprised,” Grace says. She kisses him, and it feels like before, like kissing him in an art gallery on her birthday, like ice cream cones in winter.

“I love him, too,” Harold says. It sounds like the words hurt his throat.

“I know,” Grace says.

They sit in silence for a moment.

“I'm not sure if I deserve him,” Harold says.

“Why don't you work on that,” Grace says.

–

It's Saturday night and Harold brings back dinner from her favorite Italian place. She opens a bottle of wine and sets three glasses onto the table when Harold says: “John is on a stakeout all night, he won't join us.”

Grace tries very hard not to feel a pang of disappointment at that. “Just the two of us, then,” she says, trying to cover up her reaction with extra cheerfulness. She can do this. They can work this out.

Harold is opening one of the styrofoam boxes, piling pasta onto her plate: salmon linguine, her favorite. _ _He didn't even ask me what order I want__ , Grace thinks suddenly, rummaging in the cutlery drawer.

“Just like old times,” Harold says, a little wistfully.

She bites her lip. “Yes, well.”

“We didn't get much chance to talk since everything that happened,” Harold says.

Something clenches in her chest, a sharp panic like the jab of a knife. “Let's just eat, shall we? Let's just. Have a nice evening.”

Harold looks like he's going to say something, but then he just reaches out and rests his hand over her wrist, lightly, like he's afraid that she'll bolt. God, he's so scared to touch her, and she can't stand it: she closes her arms around him and he releases a shuddering breath, hugging her back.

“ _ _Harold,__ ” she says, sounding choked and shaky, but that's all that comes out. The rest of the words inside her chest are too big, too sharp, too painful to make it through her throat.

–

The evening _ _is__ nice. Grace has started to work at a private art gallery three days a week, and she tells Harold about it while they eat. The food is delicious, and Harold is an attentive listener, he nods and asks all the right questions. He seems pleased that she likes it: the challenge, her co-workers, the atmosphere of the gallery.

Grace takes a sip of her wine. “I never applied for the position,” she says. The stem of her wineglass is delicate in her hand: it's so easy to break things, and it happens so fast. “The owner approached me, I could never figure out why.”

Harold doesn't say anything, which is answer enough.

“Ah,” Grace says. “I assumed that you had something to do with it.”

“You got the position because of your skill and knowledge, and you're doing an excellent job,” Harold says, straightening his fork and knife deliberately. His suit is impeccable, dark gray with a purple pocket square. He's all neat lines and perfect seams. It looks like armor to her.

“You mean _ _I got the position because you interfered,__ ” Grace says. “My qualifications were irrelevant at that moment. They couldn't have known how well I would be doing, my references are basically nonexistent.”

“Even if I was involved in getting you this job, that still means that the success you're having there, the work you do, is your own,” Harold says. His voice is utterly, infuriatingly calm.

She used to love this, his steadiness, the way he always seemed so level-headed, reasonable. Maybe that is the first sign your relationship is in serious trouble: the little things you used to find endearing are now driving you up the wall.

“ _ _Even if__?” Grace asks. She starts stacking the plates and clearing the table. “What is this, a political debate where you won't admit to anything?”

The look on his face makes her pause, her hand flying to her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she says.

They sit at the table for a moment, the sound of the kitchen clock ticking away in the silence like a bomb about to go off.

–

Getting undressed is familiar territory, even though the suits are new to her: Harold never used to wear clothes this expensive, so obviously tailored to his preferences. She unbuttons his waistcoat and runs her hands over the fabric. “I like it,” she says, tugging at the pocket square. “It suits you, the bold colors.”

Harold smiles and leans in to kiss her, the slide of his lips against hers maddeningly, achingly good. She tries to let herself get lost in the softness of his mouth, the feeling of his hands on her waist, stroking his thumbs over the fabric, a tease of what's to come. They both reach for the buttons on her blouse at the same time, their hands tangling between them.

“Sorry,” Harold mutters, pulling back, just as she says: “No, it's fine, go ahead.”

Grace swallows and lets him unbutton her blouse, slide it off her shoulders. He strokes her hair and leans in close again when she suddenly winces at a painful sting on her head: his watch has gotten caught in her hair, and Harold needs a moment of profuse apologizing to get it free. Then, they just stand there, awkwardly staring at each other.

“Maybe we should --” Harold says, and Grace says “Let's maybe – bed?”

In wordless agreement, they both get undressed by themselves and get under the covers, settling in. Then Grace accidentally knocks Harold in the face with her elbow, and they spend a few minutes checking if his _ _nose is broken__ and to wait for his eyes to stop watering.

Grace draws the sheets up to her chest. It would have been something they laughed about, before: the little accidents of everyday life. Now, it feels to her like they are cursed, like the universe is insisting that things have changed irrevocably.

Harold is lying next to her with a look of tense concentration on his face.

“Does it still hurt? Do you maybe want to sue me?” Grace asks, trying for light and failing miserably.

“It's my neck, actually,” Harold says, a little strained. “The pain is a little worse than expected today.”

 _ _What pain have you come to expect on a daily basis?,__ Grace wants to ask, but she can't make herself. “I'm so sorry, did I --”

“No, it's not your fault at all,” Harold says, reaching for her hand. They both stare at the ceiling. “The pain is worsened by emotional strain, I should have medicated accordingly in advance.”

Grace moves her hands away, crossing her arms over her chest. Harold turns his head a little, wincing, whether from pain or regret, she can't tell. “That wasn't supposed to be an accusation,” he says.

“Sure,” Grace says. “Things are difficult between us, maybe we should acknowledge that.”

Harold reaches for a pillow and places it behind his neck, turning around to her. She hasn't gotten used to the stiffness of his movements yet, the occasional bursts of pain that show on his face. “I don't want things to be difficult between us,” he says. His glasses are a little crooked on his nose.

“I don't want things to be difficult between us, either,” Grace says. She nudges his shoulder. “Lie back,” she says.

He takes a moment to find a comfortable position, then she climbs over to straddle him. “Is this – does this work for you?” she asks. God, she feels like she's sixteen again, fumbling awkwardly with her high school boyfriend.

Harold nods and pulls her down to kiss him, which is nice, and she enjoys the slide of skin on skin, the way her hair falls over her shoulders, brushing his throat. She curls her hand around his cock and strokes him, and Harold makes a content humming noise against her mouth. He takes a long time getting hard, and when she finally puts the condom on him and lowers herself down onto his cock, she is busy worrying that she might hurt him. Grace watches his face even when she's moving on top of him, expecting a grimace of pain, or his mouth to tighten in sudden discomfort. His fingers are working on her clit in a way that would have gotten her off easily before: Harold is very good with his hands, and when they were together, she would end up staring at the ceiling with a dazed expression on her face, her whole body thrumming with the aftershocks.

This time, she can't feel any pleasure building inside of herself, so she just sighs and kisses Harold's temple. “I don't think this is going to happen for me today,” she says, her mouth twisting regretfully on the words.

Harold moves his hand away. “Do you want me to –”

“No, it's fine, I just. Can't get my head turned off long enough, it's not you,” she says, too quickly. “But I can – I mean, you probably want to –”

Harold closes a hand around her arm. “Maybe we should go to sleep,” he says.

Grace feels awkward climbing back down to her side of the bed. She is about to offer to stroke him off when she looks down and sees that he's only half-hard: she is not the only one who doesn't seem to be in the mood.

Harold dry-swallows a pill out of a blister on the bedside table and disposes of the condom before turning off the light. Grace stares at the ceiling in the darkness. “We used to be really good at this,” she says.

She half-expects him to laugh, make some kind of joke, but there's just the sound of his breathing in the darkness. “I didn't get you the job at the gallery because I thought that you couldn't find employment on your own,” Harold says. “The position opened up and I genuinely believed that you would enjoy the work.”

“I know,” Grace says. “I do. Enjoy the work.”

She is far too tired to sleep.

–

Harold doesn't _ _run__. He just has important business to conduct, and that preferably elsewhere. He tells Grace the next morning over breakfast that something important, number-related came up that he will have to work on, and then all but flees from the apartment. Grace sits at the kitchen table and tries hard not to cry into her orange juice.

Instead, she showers and gets dressed in yoga pants and a comfortable sweater and then curls up on the couch, aimlessly zapping through TV channels and reading a novel while not absorbing a single page of it. Around five, her phone rings.

“ _ _How do you feel about curry?”__ John asks. _ _“I got some sleep after the stakeout and had a sudden craving for Thai when I woke up. I'm at that place where they make the really spicy stuff that you like. I could bring some over if you want.”__

Grace could cry at the sound of his voice, the unassuming kindness of it. “Yellow Chicken would be great,” she says, hoping that her voice sounds steady.

“ _ _On it,”__ John says.

After she hangs up, Grace stares at the phone in her hand. Then, she makes a decision and gets up to collect some supplies.

–

“You have a really tough stomach,” John says admiringly while they eat their food in the kitchen.

Grace has brewed tea out of fresh peppermint leaves: John told her that he used to drink that on hot afternoons when he and his partner were sent on assignments to places with the heat simmering in the air, strange, remote deserts in exotic locations. John never mentions any details: which countries, or what they did there. Still, she enjoys the stories, the fact that he trusts her with even this much of him.

Grace shrugs. “I always liked food. When I first moved here, I worked through all the delivery services and restaurants in my immediate vicinity. It felt a little like going on vacation, I guess, without me having to leave the house.”

John smiles. His smile has gotten wider around her: it has grown from the small twitch at the corner of his mouth into a full smile that even shows teeth, sometimes. “It's always good to experiment,” John says.

Grace puts down her fork. “Yes, about that,” she says.

–

When she leads him to the bedroom, she almost expects one of them to lose their nerve. It feels different than when the three of them are together, and just having John sit on their bed without Harold in the room is giving her a little, selfish thrill.

“What did you have in mind?” John asks. He takes off his shoes and suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves, then looks up at her from under his lashes.

Grace had considered changing into something nicer, maybe put on some make up and do her hair. Now she is happy that she stayed in her comfortable, if not very flattering attire: it doesn't seem to make a difference to John, or Harold, for that matter, and that is a kind of relief in itself.

“I'd like to tie you up for a bit,” Grace says. “If that's something you'd be comfortable with.”

That derails John's facial expression completely: he goes from disbelief to surprise to the hot flush of arousal in _ _seconds__. “Yes,” he says, voice rough, “I would be very comfortable with that.”

Grace is relieved to hear that. “I didn't have that many relationships,” she admits, producing the box with items she has collected earlier. “But I tried my hand on a few things.” She shows him the padded cuffs, and John licks his lips like his mouth has suddenly gone very, very dry.

–

“If something doesn't feel good, please tell me,” Grace says, carefully checking the restraints around John's wrists.

“Don't worry, I can take it,” John says. He is wearing just his boxers, lying on his stomach with his arms spread out and fastened securely to the headboard.

John looks gorgeous: the position shows the muscular line of his shoulders and back. Grace is still a little amazed that he would just let her do this: she knows that padded cuffs are probably not enough to keep him confined if he doesn't want to be, but to have him spread out in front of her like this is such a staggering display of trust that it makes her chest hurt a little.

“That's really not what I'm worried about,” Grace says, adjusting the blindfold.

She has a selection of things to use laid out already, soft scarves and feathers, pieces of clothing with different textures: the coarse fabric of jeans, the smooth slide of silk.

John raises his head. “Are you sure you don't want me to, well. Do something?” He asks, not for the first time. “I could make it really good.”

Grace smiles. She leans down and presses a kiss between his shoulder blades. He shivers. “Just let me take care of you,” Grace says. “I have wanted to do that for some time now. Indulge me?”

That approach seems to work. “Whatever you want,” John says.

Grace starts with a cashmere scarf: she rubs it over the skin of John's back, down his arms and thighs.

John draws in a surprised breath at the first touch. “Oh,” he says.

His shoulders relax almost imperceptibly, and it takes Grace a moment to understand why – he was certain that whatever she would do was going to _ _hurt__ , and braced himself for the pain. Grace swallows. He was going to let her tie him up and hurt him for her own pleasure, assuring her that he could _ _take it. God.__ “Let me hear you,” Grace says. “Does that feel good?”

John moans helplessly at that. “Yes,” he says, voice muffled by the pillow.

She listens for his reaction, looks for every shift in his posture. He likes the slick slide of silk and the smoothness of leather against his skin, and sighs deeply when she puts her hands on him. Grace rubs him down with nice-smelling oil and feels him melting beneath her touch: he keeps making soft, pleased noises when she rubs his shoulders and works the oil into his skin.

Later, Grace covers him with a blanket and undoes the restraints, running her hands over his wrists to check for bruising. “I will be in the kitchen for about five minutes,” she says, touching his shoulder. “Do you want me to remove the blindfold?”

John sighs happily. “No, it's fine,” he says.

“If you need anything, I'm only one room away and I'll leave the door open,” Grace says.

“Mmh, 'm good,” John says.

When she returns, John has fallen asleep, so she puts down the tray she has prepared and climbs into bed to join him. She lets her hand rest on his head, petting him lightly while making a second attempt at getting through her novel. It's easier this time: she feels grounded with John's warm, content presence next to her.

After a while, John turns his head and nuzzles her fingers, so Grace puts her book away and urges him to sit up. When she removes the blindfold, John blinks a little disoriented, squinting at the bright lights.

“How do you feel about chocolate?” Grace asks.

“I like it,” John says, tilting his head curiously.

“Good,” Grace says, smiling.

She sets the tray on the bed: she has brought chocolate, two glasses and a bottle of lovely red wine. Grace breaks off a piece of dark, rich chocolate and holds it out to John. John leans forward and eats it out of her outstretched palm, crossing his hands on his back without being asked.

“Would you like me to tie you up some more?” Grace asks.

John looks like he could cry with relief. “Please,” he says.

She ties his hands on his back and fastens the restraints to the bedpost, and then continues to feed him bits of chocolate. She let him take sips from the glass of wine, sharing it between them. John is positively glowing with satisfaction. After a while, Grace sets down the tray again and then curls up with him. She rests her head against his chest, and John makes little happy noises and lets himself be cuddled.

Grace loses track of time for a bit. She has the sheets wrapped around them, warm and safe and comfortable, and when she opens her eyes for a moment, she thinks that she sees Harold standing in the doorway.

The next time Grace wakes up, she straightens and looks at John. He looks completely relaxed, grounded in a way she's never seen him before, still tied to her bed, his lips stained with red wine.

“Want me to undo these?” She asks.

John nods, so she opens the cuffs and then starts rubbing his arms, loosening the muscles. John's eyelids flutter with pleasure. “Thank you,” he says, so _ _glad__ that it makes something inside of her shatter.

Grace doesn't realize that she's crying until John is pulling her close and she's sobbing against his chest. Thick, hot tears spill over her cheeks and she can't seem to make them stop.

“I'm sorry,” she says, her whole body shaking with it, “it's just that – it's so hard, everything is _ _so hard__ and this isn't, and I can't. You trust me _ _so much__ and you let me take care of you, and I just. I was so _ _alone__ ,” Grace manages, and then she's crying too hard to speak.

John doesn't really say anything: he just holds her, and strokes her hair, makes sure that the sheets are covering her so that she won't get cold. Grace hasn't cried once since Harold came back into her life, and it feels like it's all built up inside of her and now somebody has opened a pressure valve and there's nothing she can do to hold it back.

At some point, the tears stop. Her head is aching and her eyes feel red and sore. She scoots a little closer to John, so he hugs her tighter and presses soft, careful kisses against her head. “Ssh, it's okay,” he says. If she had any more tears left, that would probably make her cry again.

“He was dead. He _ _died__ , “ Grace says. “I know he didn't, but for me, he died, and it was so awful and I didn't have anyone and now everything is just. Messed up, and complicated, and I hardly recognize myself.”

John doesn't say anything to that, and she's glad for it. Grace wipes at her eyes and carefully sits up. She is afraid that John will look at her with pity, but he just looks worried and a little sad.

“Sorry for crying all over you,” Grace says, producing some tissues from the bedside table and blowing her nose.

“Don't be,” John says. “Do you feel a bit better?”

She nods. “A bit better, and pretty stupid.”

“Hey,” John says, resting a hand against her cheek. She leans into the touch. “You don't ever have to apologize. I want to be there for you. You're not alone anymore.”

Grace can feel her bottom lip trembling, so she just lets herself sink against him, cling to him until she has regained her balance. John pulls her close and strokes her back through her sweater, soothing, repetitive movements, until she falls asleep with her face pressed against his shoulder.

–

Grace wakes up disoriented, her hair sticking to her face. “What time is it?” she asks, raising her head from John's chest.

“Just after eleven,” John says gently, brushing her messy hair away from her face.

“There's dessert in the fridge if you're hungry,” Harold says from the doorway. He unclasps his cuff links and carefully places them on the dresser. He must have just come home.

Grace wonders if her face is all red and blotchy, if Harold can tell that she's been crying. His eyes flick to the padded cuffs and back again, a quick calculation.

“I'd love some dessert, actually,” Grace says, taking in Harold's expression. She nudges John's leg. “Would you mind –”

“I'll be right back,” John says, getting to his feet and reaching for a bathrobe that he wraps around himself, then leaving for the kitchen.

Harold still leans against the dresser. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“You are about to say something scathing,” Grace says, sitting up. She combs a hand through her hair. “I don't think John needs to be exposed to any more jagged edges than necessary.”

Harold's expression softens. “I'm glad you thought so,” he says. “I might have said something in a fit of inappropriate jealousy that I might have regretted later.”

“Jealousy?” Grace asks, smiling despite herself. “Jealous of him or me, Harold?”

Harold drums his fingers on the wood of the dresser. “Both,” he admits. There is a kind of electricity in the air, like there might be a thunderstorm later. “I have been cultivating a distance between you and me, and I believe that might have been a mistake.”

“What were you going to say?” It feels like running her hands over the edge of a knife, but she prefers this to the conversations where the sharp edges are all smoothed out, where they only speak in comforting white lies. “The thing that you might have regretted later.”

Harold fixes her with a steady gaze, like he is calculating again.

“I only want the truth,” Grace says.

“I was going to suggest that there's still an engagement ring you two could make use of, if you were so inclined,” Harold says, voice even, but the meaning behind them cracks like a whip.

Grace scoffs. “I'm glad you didn't say that to John.”

“Because it might have hurt him?”

“Because he might have punched you in the face,” Grace says.

Harold closes his hands around the cuff links again. “You say that like I don't deserve it.”

Grace doesn't know what has changed between them, why they suddenly stopped circling each other with careful, deliberate words and are down to this. Maybe _ _she__ has changed: maybe some kind of lock has been broken inside of her and now the doors are open, everything exposed to the light.

“I say that like it would hurt John more than it would hurt you.”

Harold considers that. “I am glad that you have someone to confide in,” he finally says. “I just selfishly wish that it was me.”

Grace pulls the sleeves of her sweater over her hands. “Do you mean that?” she asks. “Do you want to know what bothers me?”

Harold keeps perfectly still. “Yes,” he says.

Grace fixes her gaze on a point above his left shoulder. “It's about the time when you were – When I thought that you were dead. It was. It hurt me, in ways I am only now beginning to understand.” She looks at his face. “Are you sure that you want to hear this?”

Harold inhales a shuddering breath. “Every word,” he says, and oh, she forgot this: how brave he can be, how resilient.

“I didn't sleep,” Grace says. Her voice comes out flat, like all the feeling has drained out of her by now. “I couldn't sleep because I kept dreaming of you, so I stayed awake and cried and screamed into my pillow. I was alone. I was all alone in that house with nobody to talk to, because you were the person I could talk to and you were gone.” She's crying again, but her voice is steady. “Once, I collapsed in the bathroom and needed to get stitches.”

Harold doesn't come closer. He doesn't move. She can hardly tell if he's breathing.

Grace pulls her hair away from her temple to reveal the scar, thin and jagged. “Do you know why I fainted? Because at some point, I just stopped eating. I didn't care. I wasn't hungry, and I went for days without food because there was no one to remind me, because I didn't care. One evening I drank a whole bottle of vodka and took five aspirin just to make the pain _ _stop.__ I thought 'oh, maybe you won't wake up tomorrow' and then I thought 'so, what?'.”

“Grace,” Harold says. It sounds like a bruise blossoming under the skin.

“I want us to be okay. I want to forgive you, I want. I want to be happy again,” Grace says. She feels dizzy and scared and she hurts all over. “But it's _ _difficult__ and _ _painful.__ And you can't run away from this. You can't resent me for seeking comfort when you're not dealing with this.”

Harold nods weakly.

“It was different for you,” Grace says. “You knew that I was safe, you didn't lose me like that. I am so sorry about your friend, I really am, but you need to understand that it was like that for me, that I lost you like you lost him, and some days I don't recognize the man who came back to me.”

“I am sorry, Grace. I am sorry that I didn't do everything to make amends,” Harold says. “That's going to change. I'm going to –“ He stops himself, warily. “What do you need?” He asks, then. “Right now, what do you need from me?”

“I think I need you to go,” Grace says, her voice shaky. “Just for tonight, I can't – I don't have the emotional energy to deal with this right now.”

“Yes,” Harold says. “Of course.”

He turns in the doorway.

“Harold,” Grace says.

He stops.

“I want this to work, but I can't do it on my own. I've gone as far as I can, and it's your turn now. It's on you to make this work,” Grace says.

After he is gone, Grace wipes her face and stares into the half-darkness of her bedroom. When she feels John's hand on her shoulder, she needs to stop herself from flinching: she had forgotten that he was still there.

He has brought her a glass bowl of ice cream and a silver spoon. Grace doesn't have to try it to know that it's her favorite.

“Would you like me to leave you alone?” John asks. “Or, you know, leave altogether?”

“I'm sorry, you didn't ask to get involved in this,” she tells him, stroking a hand over his cheek.

“Grace, I'm _ _lucky__ that I get to be a part of your lives, yours and Harold's.” He pauses. “I'm sorry, I didn't – when he first told me about you, I didn't understand what it meant, for you.”

Grace manages a weak smile. “And now you do?” John nods. She squeezes his hand. “Stay with me,” she says.

–

**PART III.**

“How did you do it?” Grace asks. She touches one of the glossy images that are taped to the see-through board in the middle of the room. The servers are humming softly. “This _machine_ , how did you build it?”

The library had not seemed like a real place to her from the things she heard: Grace expected a hidden office, a flat tucked away between rows and rows of identical looking houses. It seemed like Harold to use a metaphor, something misleading. When Harold had led her through the foyer with its high ceiling, the sea of books strewn around the floor, it had felt like a dream: _I think it's time that you get all the necessary information to make a choice_ , he had said, and she didn't know what he meant, then.

Now, standing next to his desk with all the computer monitors and the couch where John is reclining, not turning any pages in the book he pretends to be reading, Grace thinks she understands. The choice is if she wants this, if she can imagine making this a part of her life.

Harold is sitting in a chair at the desk, watching her. “I had a long time to get it right,” he says. It's not what she meant, but he probably knew that.

“Did he make you hide your gun stash before I came in?” Grace asks, turning around to John.

The tips of John's ears turn slightly red, and she laughs. Harold gives John a disapproving look.

“I also dusted the shelves,” John supplies helpfully, stretching his long limbs, his collar falling open where he has the first few buttons of his shirt undone. Grace has a sudden visual of Harold bending John over the couch in the frantic adrenaline rush after a close call, John's skin pressed against the smooth leather. She shakes herself out of it.

“Are you going to tell me about her?” Grace asks, nodding to the picture taped to the board. It's a photograph of a woman in her fifties, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Her name is Andrea Higgins, and we have reason to believe that her life might be in danger,” Harold says. He pulls up a few windows on the screen, and Grace sits down in the chair next to him, ready to listen.

–

After dinner, Grace hands Harold his glass of wine and says, “John and I can take care of the dishes, why don't you go ahead and relax a bit?” Harold is too smart to ignore the blatant suggestion and retreats into the living room.

“Was it your idea?” Grace asks John as soon as Harold is out of earshot, scrubbing at a plate before handing it to John. He wiggles his eyebrows. “I think we both know that I would have made that soup from scratch,” he says. He leans in, whispering conspiratorially. “I think Harold got our dinner _as takeout from a restaurant._ ”

“Stop it,” Grace says, fond despite herself. She whacks him over the arm with a dish towel, and John laughs, rich and deep. “You know what I mean. The library, his sudden decision to show me the ropes. Is that on you?”

John's face turns very serious. “He talked about it before,” John says. “I think he was worried that if you'd get too involved, it might expose you to serious danger. But the other day, he said that he'd thought about it and that he had no right to keep these things from you, and that you should know what you're getting yourself into if you should choose to take part.”

“Take part?” Grace asks. “Sure, because I bring so many useful skills to the table that might be helpful for this.”

It feels like her heartbeat is skipping. She wanted to know about the library, she wanted to know about _everything_ but she hasn't thought any further than that: what she would do once she knew.

John puts away the dishtowel and places his hands on her arms. “Hey,” he says, gently. She probably communicates her freakout well enough to make _him_ freak out. “You know that I would never let anything happen to you, right? And Harold wouldn't, either.”

Grace nods. “I know, that's not what I'm worried about. I just. I guess I arranged myself with never really knowing what it is that you do, and now that I've seen part of it, well. It makes it more real, somehow. It reminds me that you're helping people, and I guess I would like to know how I could be a part of that.”

John smiles. His hands are stroking over her arms. “I'm sure we can figure something out,” he says. “I think he just wanted make sure to give you the choice before it's too late.”

Grace frowns at that. “What do you mean?”

John looks vaguely uncomfortable, his hand rubbing at his nape. “Look, I know that things between the two of you were kind of rough, for a while? I think Harold has realized that you are not going to wait indefinitely for him to make amends.”

Grace has a knee-jerk reaction of _Of course I'll never leave him, what are you talking about._ But the thought is followed by fragments of other things: a grave that was not real, the day Harold showed up on her doorstep, years later, _The concept of a firewall is that there is a system which must be protected, I want you to trust me like I trust you._

“What did he say, exactly?” Grace asks. She is distantly aware that her hands are dripping with dishwater.

“' _I have come to the realization that Grace is not going to wait indefinitely for me to make amends'_ ,” John says, and Grace has to smile at John's face, his helpless, endlessly tender expression.

“Can I give you a hug?” Grace asks, echoing her own words from a different time, a different moment when they were like this, shoulder to shoulder in front of the sink, when John was so cautious about how he would fit into their lives, if he was taking something away from them.

Grace reads the answer in the pleased curl of his mouth, the way he spreads his arms to welcome her. She leans in to hug him, and rests her head against his chest.

–

For as long as she lives, Grace will never get tired of this: Harold's hands on her, slowly unzipping her dress, John's soft, pliant mouth under hers, his skin warm under her fingers. John is down to his boxers and rummages around in the drawer for lube.

“There is something that I wanted to suggest,” Harold says, before John can undress all the way and roll over the way he likes to do, communicating his enthusiasm for submission more than clearly.

John looks up at him, the bottle of lube and the pack of condoms in his hand. He listens attentively.

“John, I was wondering,” Harold says, and it takes a moment for Grace to read the tightness in his shoulders, the hard clench of his jaw. “If instead of our usual arrangement, you'd like to have me for once.”

Grace can see John's pupils dilate at Harold's words, hilariously torn between disbelief and desire. In all the time they've been together, Harold has never made the suggestion, asked for even a finger or a toy, and the idea makes the blood pool low and hot in Grace's groin.

John opens his mouth but fails to produce any sound. Grace is a little afraid that he suffered a stroke from the mental image of getting to fuck Harold, of Harold _letting him._

“Harold, you don't have to prove anything, you know,” Grace says, pushing her own desire down to look at this issue objectively. “If you're in a mood to let go of some control, there are things we could do that don't involve –”

“Penetration?” Harold asks, tilting his head.

John's breathing might deteriorate into an asthma attack sometime soon.

Harold takes the lube from John's hand and considers it thoughtfully. “It's not that I mind the act itself, or what it possibly signifies,” he says, in the same tone he uses when they're discussing art or technology or politics. “My experience in being on the receiving end of anal intercourse is, well, limited, and I have some physical limitations that I assume would have to be worked around.”

“I'd never,” John says, voice impossibly rough, “ _We'd_ never hurt you.”

Harold looks at him, blinking slowly, like he lost the thread of conversation. “Of course, that's not the issue at all,” he says, softly. He reaches out to place a hand on John's cheek and John leans into the touch, turning his head to mouth at Harold's palm.

“I am merely acknowledging that it might take more, well, _effort_ and patience to get me into a state that you, for example, occupy with such ease, I'm not sure if the two of you would even want to give it a try.”

Grace barely suppresses a laugh. “ _Harold_ ,” she says. “John is about ready to come untouched from just the idea, I don't think our consent is the issue here.” She makes sure not to place too much emphasis on _our:_ she trusts Harold to decide what he wants and what he is comfortable to go through with. “I just don't want you to think that you have to prove a point, or force yourself into some kind of trust exercise for our sakes.”

Harold lets his hand slide away from John's face. “There is a certain appeal in watching John surrender control,” Harold says. He is tenting the front of his pants, clearly on board with the idea. “I find the thought of reaching that point myself, well. Very tempting,” he finally says.

Grace is lightheaded with the weight of it: the sheer amount of trust and force of will it must take for Harold to even ask this from them, to give himself into their hands like that. “I love you,” she says, suddenly, forcefully, and something in the set of Harold's shoulders shifts into determination.

“How would you like me, then?” Harold asks, unbuttoning his waistcoat, and John puts a hand over his face and groans in helpless arousal.

–

Grace doesn't quite trust John in his current state to manage the preparations and not come all over himself, so she steps up to the task. Harold undresses and sits down on the bed, and Grace kisses him deeply, proudly, touched by his admissions of need and vulnerability in ways that she can't explain.

When Harold makes an attempt to lie down on his stomach, she places a hand on his arm. “On your back, maybe, if that's alright? I'd like to see your face.”

John, who is sitting on the bed next to them, outfitted with a cock ring that Grace put on him (“I think this is wise under the circumstances,” she had said, and John whimpered when she slipped it on, his skin feverishly hot under her hands), makes a little, needy sound.

She helps Harold to get settled in: with pillows to support his back, his legs drawn up as far as feels comfortable for him, hips canted up slightly by another pillow. He is hard, the skin of his stomach flushed a lovely red, and Grace lets herself sink against him for a moment, to kiss him and let her hands wander over his skin soothingly. Then she squirts lube onto her fingers. “Cold,” she warns, but he doesn't startle when she applies lube to his opening, lets the tip of her index finger rest against the resistance.

Grace has done this for John many times, but it was completely different with him. Where John opened up easily, effortlessly under her touch, Harold tenses in irregular intervals, his breathing carefully controlled. With John, this had been easy: he had welcomed her touch, craved it, relaxing around her fingers, his head falling back, eyes closed. He pushed back against her, greedy for more, and sometimes she would get him off like that, fuck him in slow, sweet strokes of her fingers, until he was whimpering and shaking apart beneath her.

Harold, on the other hand, is clamped down tightly like an oyster, his hands clenched in the sheets. Grace can see the discomfort written clearly on his face, so she draws back, her hands on his thighs. “Harold.”

Harold looks at her, a little unfocused, a tremor running through his legs. “It's fine,” he says, too quickly, a muscle working in his jaw. She touches his legs gently and he lets them sink against the sheets, releasing a breath.

“Hey, are you here with me?” Grace asks, pressing a kiss against his knee. There is scar tissue on the outside of his thigh, rough under her hands.

“Hey,” Harold says, sounding a little dazed. “I'm sorry, I'm not making this easy for you.”

“I like a challenge,” Grace says softly. She kisses the skin of the inside of his thigh and Harold sighs, letting his head sink back.

Grace keeps working in increments, letting him adjust to the stretch, fight whatever mental walls he has to break down to make himself relax. It takes a long time, and apparently, it drowns out some of the urgency that John was feeling. He lies down next to Harold to nuzzle at his throat and stroke his chest, and Harold turns his head as much as his injuries will allow, hiding his face when Grace pushes a second finger into impossibly tight heat.

Harold inhales sharply, tensing all over before managing to relax again.

“Ssh, you're doing so well,” Grace says.

John kisses a line from Harold's sternum down to his stomach, mouthing at where Harold's cock is resting on his stomach, still roused. Harold gasps when John runs his tongue over the tip, teasing the slit.

“I'd like to try something,” John says, his voice hoarse. “If you'll let me?”

Harold nods once, sharply, apparently struggling to form words. Grace moves over, making room for John between Harold's legs, and then John smiles and bends down to put his mouth on Harold. Harold makes a noise halfway between a sob and a moan when John licks into him. Grace shivers and presses a hand between her own legs, rubbing the heel of her hand against her clit. Harold makes desperate sounds beneath John, his cock twitching and spilling precome onto his stomach.

“Please,” he manages after a while, “I think I am – I _need_ ,” and John looks up at him with everything written clearly on his face: his love and tenderness and utter devotion.

Grace already moved at a slow pace, but John is even more careful, using an abundance of lube and barely moving an inch after he lined up the blunt head of his cock at Harold's entrance. Harold is desperate by now, tears spilling from the corners of his eyes. “Please,” he says, “ _please,”_ when John is just barely pushing in. Grace climbs over to him to kiss Harold, run her fingers through his hair.

“It's okay, Harold, John will take care of you,” Grace says, feeling the answering shudder through Harold's body.

John is pushing forward inch by careful inch, hands resting on Harold's thighs. He wears an expression of deep concentration, and Grace wonders how much strength of will it takes him not to push forward, create a rhythm.

“Oh god,” Harold gasps when John pushes in deeper, and Harold's whole body shudders with it. “John, _oh_.”

John looks like he is having an out-of-body experience, serene and strangely peaceful, and then he changes the angle slightly and pushes in further and Harold's whole body jerks with it.

“Yes, oh, _yes_ ,” Harold says, and Grace leans her forehead against his, sweat slick and burning hot, and he is holding on to her, his hand on her shoulder, anchoring himself.

John buries himself to the hilt and makes a sweet, low moan. Then he starts to move in earnest and Harold's hand tightens on Grace's shoulder, his breath stuttering out of him. John moves smoothly, achingly slow, his eyes on Harold's face the whole time.

There is a spot John hits with every thrust that makes Harold gasp and sob, and John adjusts his position until he has Harold moaning loudly, nailing his prostate with every stroke. Grace has never heard Harold sound like that: unrestrained, cracked open.

“ _Please make me come,”_ Harold tells her, roughly, desperately, and Grace reaches down to close a hand around his cock and stroke him in time with John's thrusts.

It doesn't take long after that until Harold gasps and spills over her hand, his body going limp all at once. John makes a thin little noise and stops moving, drops of sweat running down his temples. With what must be a huge effort, he starts to pull out when Harold stirs beneath him.

“No, please,” Harold says, his voice scratchy and rough. “In me, John.”

John closes his eyes like he has to pull himself back from the edge, then he starts fucking into Harold again with shallow thrusts that become more desperate the closer he gets to orgasm.

“Let us hear you, John,” Grace says, one hand between her legs, stroking herself. Harold shivers next to her, his spent cock twitching in sympathy.

John whines, a low, needy sound, and thrusts twice more before he shudders and stills.

After, John removes the cock ring and crawls up the bed to sit between Grace's legs, nudging her hand away. Grace sighs and leans back while he eats her out, sucking her clit into her mouth while Harold is still panting beside her, boneless and spent.

She comes quickly, one hand tightening in John's hair. Then, she pulls him up to her, his chin slick and shiny when she kisses him. She can taste herself in his mouth.

They convince Harold to walk over to the bathroom on unsteady feet: while Grace steps into the shower with him and cleans him up thoroughly under the hot spray, kneading the muscles of his neck and thigh to prevent soreness, John changes the sheets.

Harold is docile, in an almost dreamy state: he lets them take care of him, wash him and push him down between them on the soft, clean sheets, Grace and John lavishing kisses and caresses on his body, holding him close between them.

“ _Thank you,”_ Harold manages, once, before his eyelids flutter and he starts to drift off to sleep.

“You were so good today,” Grace says. She takes John's hand in hers to kiss his knuckles. John beams at her, bright and proud, and settles in next to Harold for the night.

Grace kisses Harold's temple, takes his hand and entwines their fingers so that she's holding on to both of them, the two people she loves most in her life.

“Goodnight,” John says, squeezing her hand.

Grace rests her head on Harold's chest, where she can hear his heartbeat. “Goodnight, John,” she says.

–

**EPILOGUE**

“Do you like it?” Grace asks, leaning closer to get a better look at the brushstrokes on the painting: bright reds and yellows, and a sharp aquamarine line in the center like a horizon, sky or sea.

The woman turns her head, startled. Nervous energy surrounds her like a cloud of static electricity. “Sorry, I don't really know anything about art,” she says, managing a nervous laugh. She has a lovely voice, Grace thinks. A pretty, pale face under the bruises on her jaw and temple.

“Oh, but you don't have to,” Grace says. The earpiece stays quiet. In the hallway there is only the gallery's security guard, half asleep. “Art is about evoking emotions, I think, not just critical analysis.”

The woman's eyes move through the room. It's early on a Tuesday, and they are the only visitors in this part of the exhibition. Grace takes a folded, glossy brochure out of her handbag. “If you're interested, the artist is showing some of her work at a vernissage this weekend,” Grace says. “I was thinking about going with our mutual friend, actually.”

The woman releases a breath. “You work with John,” she says, relieved. Her hand is shaking when she takes the brochure from Grace's hand. “I didn't have a chance to thank him, he.” A tear rolls down her cheek and she wipes it away with her sleeve. “I think I might be dead without his help.”

“I'll make sure to mention it to him, Irene,” Grace says. They both look at the painting. Grace imagines John and Harold listening in from the library, where the dust is floating in the air like specks of gold. “Your husband will go to prison for a long time for the things he's done.”

Irene presses her lips together. “You don't know him. You don't know the kinds of friends he has. He'll be out in no time, and he'll be _furious –_ ” She crosses her arms in front of her chest. Grace wants to touch her, provide comfort, but she's afraid that she'll startle Irene, make her withdraw even further.

“I'm sorry, I do not mean to be ungrateful,” she says quickly. “But I have tried to start a new life before, and every time he has managed to find me.”

Grace looks at the vibrant colors. She is not too fond of abstract art herself, but she still likes this painting: it reminds her of a sunrise, the boldness of a new start. “There is a small silver key taped to the third page of the brochure I just handed you. It opens a safe deposit box at Penn Station. The combination is 3-0-0-4. Can you repeat that back to me, please?”

Irene keeps her eyes fixed on the painting, the brochure clasped in her hands. “Penn Station, a safe deposit box, combination 3-0-0-4.”

“Very good,” Grace says softly.”You will find a suitcase there that contains a passport with a new name, a matching birth certificate and other official records, as well as enough money for a fresh start. Do not use your old passport or your mobile phone. As soon as you leave the gallery, dispose of these things immediately. Only take the barest essentials from home, and nothing that will link you to your old identity. Use the money to buy a plane ticket to the destination of your choice. No credit cards, you pay everything in cash.”

Irene takes a shuddering breath. “A fresh start,” she says.

“Do you have any questions?” Grace asks.

For a moment, it looks like Irene will reach out to her, throw her arms around Grace's neck, but then she just wipes at her eyes and folds the brochure into her handbag. “Thank you,” she says, and then: “I don't even know your name.”

Grace considers that. “You can call me Mrs. Finch,” she finally says.

–

When Grace returns to the library, John and Harold are doing a very bad job at pretending that they are busy: John is cleaning an assault rifle that is already gleaming in the light, while Harold frowns at his computer screens.

“It went really well,” Grace says cheerfully. She drops her handbag onto Harold's desk and leans down to kiss John on the lips, a sweet, familiar peck.

Harold turns to her in his chair and she grins and kisses him, too, tugging at his tie. “I thought you might send John after me as a private bodyguard,” Grace says. “Thanks for letting me do this one on my own.”

Harold huffs. “If I had assumed that the situation might become dangerous in any way, I _might have_ ,” he says. “You are not indestructible, you know.”

“I know,” Grace says, rolling her eyes. “Learn how to take a compliment, Harold.”

John has abandoned his weapon. He grins at her with badly concealed pride. “You would have made a formidable spy,” he says, and Grace laughs and sits down on his lap.

“You need to teach me how to play Baccarat,” she says. John's hand is warm on her back, and she leans against him.

Harold watches them with an amused expression on his face. “I did not realize that we were married, by the way,” he says.

“ _Mrs. Finch_?” John says against Grace's ear. He sounds delighted. “I like the sound of that.”

Grace laughs. “Maybe _I'll_ be the voice giving orders in your ear, soon,” she says, and enjoys the way it makes John shiver despite the warmth of the room.

Harold gets up from his chair and walks over to them. He runs his fingers over John's face and then leans down to kiss the top of Grace's head. “If that is what you want, maybe we should consider wedding rings,” he says, almost absently. Then, with his fingers sliding into John's open collar to touch the hollow of his throat: “A set of three, obviously.”

John makes a little, needy noise at that, his eyelids fluttering shut.

“Obviously,” Grace says. She kisses John's cheek. Harold's left hand is resting on her shoulder, his thumb stroking idle circles against her skin.

John leans closer to nuzzle the side of Grace's throat, his face hidden in her hair. “ _Fuck me_ ,” he says, “either one of you. Please.”

Grace turns her head to Harold. There is soft light coming through the windows, and Harold's hands are warm from the cup of tea he has been holding. He kisses her and something settles in her chest: his name isn't Harold Martin and it isn't Harold Finch, but these were never the things that mattered. _Maybe,_ Grace thinks, _that is the lesson: learn which things matter, and hold on to them._

“Let's go home, darling,” Grace says.

– fin

**Author's Note:**

> I originally started writing this fic for _Sky_ , who held my hand through the entire writing process and gave me a piece of her mind when I was about to throw the towel (you're fab, bb, thanks for saving my emotional arc <33). This story is essentially a thank you for all the kickass beta work she does – you are the best, and don't you forget it. 
> 
> This story probably wouldn't exist without _Dana_ & our long conversations about the themes of this fic (forgiveness, how relationships work, why Harold Finch is such a dick etc.). I also made her explain computer-y metaphors to me and stole all the parts I liked best. (Seriously, like I could have thought of that firewall-thing all by myself. Don't you people know me at all?) Finally, Dana was the one who lovingly micromanaged me into writing the epilogue: YOU ARE MY FAVE OK.
> 
> Thanks so much to _neverwhere_ , who read this fic and offered excellent comments and wonderful encouragement. <3 You are delightful!
> 
> I owe _findundergrounddragoutofwater_ a lot for discussing the kinky parts of this fic with me, and for being INSANELY HELPFUL with the development of the emotional arc: you are a treasure, dear, thanks so much for your help!
> 
> Lots of love to _teaanddenial_ for praise  & encouragement, and for always being so enthusiastic about my writing. 
> 
> Finally, thanks to everyone who sent me messages about this story and told me how excited they were for this fic: you guys are all amazing <333


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